


the chasm grows

by I_wouldnt_be_one_of_them



Category: Black Sails, Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo, Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
Genre: (of sorts), Crossover, Grantaire is Long John Silver, Immortality, Knowledge of Black Sails is recommended!! Knowledge of Les Mis is less critical!, Multi, Unhealthy Relationships, Yes you read that right, apologies to ao3 tag wranglers, assuming you can accept Victor Hugo failing to mention Grantaire missing a leg, brief suicide attempt lmk if you need details, canon-typical excessive alcohol consumption by Grantaire, more or less canon compliant for all canons, post-canon (mostly) for Black Sails - canon era for Treasure Island and Les Mis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-12 21:22:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 38,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29142186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_wouldnt_be_one_of_them/pseuds/I_wouldnt_be_one_of_them
Summary: In which John Silver has not only a long fucking memory but also a long fucking life, Grantaire is the way he is because he's seen some shit, and those two facts are related.
Relationships: Madi/John Silver (Black Sails), implied semi-requited silverflint and ExR
Comments: 5
Kudos: 14





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I can't say I would have predicted that my first published Les Mis fic after 6+ years in the fandom would be a crossover, but here we are! This fic came about because it occurred to me while watching Black Sails that Luke Arnold would be a great Grantaire and also that Grantaire and Silver have some things in common, and my brain jumped to "what if they were somehow the same person" and ran off from there. Maybe a slightly niche crossover, but it was a passion project for me and I hope a few other people enjoy it too!  
> I did borrow large chunks of canon dialogue, so thanks/apologies to all the writers haha. Also huge shoutout to my friend Teresa for beta-reading despite not having seen Black Sails.  
> (This has three chapters, all complete, and they should all be up by the end of the evening! I've never posted a chaptered work, so do let me know if something has gone amiss with formatting.)

Halfway back to Nassau, Jack Rackham tries to kill John Silver.

“Don't take it personally,”says Rackham, spinning tales of the Guthries and their demands, claiming they won't believe him without a body, and as Flint has disappeared from the picture he may as well offer the next best thing.

There's a chance, John thinks, that Jack actually believes that. He may truly think that killing Long John Silver is the only way to end this war, just like John believed – no, _believes –_ that dragging Captain Flint to that plantation was the only way. They may all just be fools doing what they think is best.

But he remembers fire-lit wrecks and pearls sinking into the ocean, dead crews and a lost captain, plans ruined and a fortune squandered, alliances betrayed and a cache buried where only Flint knows, and he thinks that perhaps this is more personal than Rackham is willing to admit. Besides which, Jack Rackham has always been obsessed with his legacy, and what better way to become a legend than to kill the new pirate king himself?

"You are not going to kill me," he says.

He has barely spoken since before parting with Flint, and his voice comes out hoarse, like his normal silver tongue is just steel that has been rusted over. But the words are pushed out from some deep dark place within him where the truth lies, and the rust does nothing to negate the sharpness of the sudden sense of confidence that rushes through him. Rackham's eyes widen and he takes a step back, hearing something in his voice or seeing something in his face. But this is not a threat. It is a fact. Jack Rackham can try to kill him, but this is not how he will die.

Rackham shakes off his alarm and leaps toward him with his sword, and he parries easily. Rackham has been a pirate longer, but fighting has never been his strength, especially against someone personally trained by Captain Flint, and John gets the upper hand quickly. Rackham becomes increasingly desperate, and John sees the moment he decides to stop playing fair.

But he sees it a second too late, because _fucking_ Flint was right and he still hasn't perfected looking at two spaces at the same time, but he was also fucking wrong because he was focused on Rackham's damn wrist when he should have seen the flickering conviction in his eyes. So he's just a hair too slow to move out of the way when Rackham pulls a knife from somewhere and drives it up through his ribs.

For a moment, he fails to register what happened. He feels like Rackham has punched the air out of him, and oddly like the whole world is suspended. Everything is still except for a light wind that he tries and fails to breathe in. Slowly he looks down and stares at the knife lodged in his chest, the blood spurting out around it, Rackham's shaking hand holding it in, and all at once the shock is replaced by blinding, burning pain.

He stumbles and Rackham eases them both to the ground. "I am sorry it had to end like this, Mr. Silver," he says, his voice distant, and then he twists the knife and everything goes black.

Then he does not die.

He opens his eyes. The pain is mostly gone except for a mild aching soreness radiating from the spot where the wound was – _was_ , because when he looks down the knife is gone and the skin has sealed up completely leaving only a very faint outline of scar tissue. Which is impossible, because only a few minutes could have passed; the blood on his clothes is still fresh, and Jack Rackham is still kneeling above him and looks as pale as a man who's seeing a ghost.

"I did tell you," he wheezes, sitting up, "That you wouldn't kill me." He hopes that Jack can't see that he too is fairly astonished by this turn of events, and grins wildly to cover up his panic.

"Good lord," says Rackham. Then he pulls out a pistol and shoots him in the head.

This time when he wakes up, Rackham lets loose a long string of curses and scrambles backwards. John stands and slowly steps toward him, stopping when he's standing directly above him and silently meeting his appalled stare.

"What are you?" Rackham whispers, and Long John Silver or someone like him stares back and says, "The monster they tell their children about."

Once, long before he was John Silver, he witnessed a major earthquake. It was an experience beyond comprehension, a sight unlike anything he saw before or after, and it was then that he first discovered that the power of nature was not to be taken lightly. The earth shuddered and cracked and tilted and moved, rivers were dammed and flowed out into places the water did not belong, ships in the harbor slipped under waves, houses crumbled to ruins. The city was shaken physically and emotionally, and when the tremors ended, everything had irrevocably changed.

Something like that began to happen inside him in the forest with Flint.

It started slowly. A subtle splintering as he said _nothing can stop it from beginning now_ and Flint said _nothing but you_. Something shifting as Flint said _we will have been for nothing_. Something breaking as he raised his gun.

At first he barely felt it. The undercurrent of something deep in his soul was less obvious than the overt stress of the confrontation. But as they left the island, it became harder to ignore, and he grew uneasy as he started to hear a rising roar. They boarded the boat and there was a sickening sliding sensation. Flint started to fade away into McGraw and something in John transformed too.

Outside the plantation they stood facing each other for a long moment. Their backs were straight, and they stared into each other's eyes, half challenging and half longing, ignoring the men around them. John held both of Flint's bound hands in his own and did not acknowledge the shaking.

“You will regret this,”Flint told him again. Between the forest and the plantation, they had barely spoken to each other, aside from a brief shouting match not long after John had finally managed to get him onto the ship. John hadn’t seen the point in continuing to try to justify his behavior when he knew it would fall on unwilling ears, and Flint had seemed incapable of articulating whatever else he might have wanted to say to him. But John had heard those words – _you will regret this_ – at least ten times, always with a different intonation. Fierce, at first, threatening. Later it sounded more pleading. In that last moment it mostly just sounded sad.

John imagined buildings crashing down and families drowning and everything falling apart and thought _I will never regret this_ and thought _I regret it already_ and somehow both were true. He stayed silent, and he let go. Something crumbled in Flint's face and he nodded, resigned, and allowed John's men to take him away.

As the gate closed, John turned away, and in that moment whatever had been happening inside him took him over. The quake drove him to his knees and pressed the air out of his lungs and suddenly the world went completely white.

The next thing he knew, he was lying in the captain's cabin of the Lion. He sat bolt upright with a gasp and Israel Hands, leaning against the desk and staring impassively at him, told him they found him lying unconscious on the ground outside the plantation when they went to leave.

John asked about Flint, and Hands rolled his eyes and asked, “Do you want him out of your life or not?” He really didn’t have an answer for that, and Hands snorted and said the ship had been out of the harbor for half an hour already, so either way it was done.

After Hands left the cabin, John pressed a palm against his chest. Something had settled. But just like when he looked around the town after the earthquake, when he looked within himself he felt that something was incredibly wrong, or at least different.

He had undergone a seismic shift.

What the fuck that meant, exactly, he hadn’t had time to consider. And now – now that he seems to have _survived being killed_ – it’s got to be related, but it raises more questions than it answers.

He doesn’t want to think about what caused it. He’s always been more focused on the future than the past anyway, not that he much wants to consider the future either now. The implications _this_ has for the future are so terrifying that after a lifetime of exhibiting the strongest self-preservation instincts of anyone he’s ever met, all he can feel in response to the discovery that he may be some kind of immortal is a deep numbness.

A few days ago he felt, maybe for the first time, that he truly had things to live for, not just survival. _“I see a life for myself with her,”_ he had told Flint, and it had been true. He had allowed himself, in quiet moments, to picture a beautiful dreamlike existence – a house far from the sea, settled on solid earth, John and Madi curled up together in a comfortable chair with the knowledge that no war could touch them. Maybe even a child playing by their feet, a child who had never known slavery or hunger or fear and never would. It was a dream he had never before thought could be his, but for a short time he’d foolishly let himself think it was possible. On very rare occasions, for reasons he could not quite comprehend until it was too late, he even imagined Flint there too, having good-natured arguments about literature with Madi and helping John with the cooking and – and John had been fucking stupid, that’s the point.

Now, for all he wants to think he can still have some part of that vision, he knows what will happen when he gets back to the Maroon Island. He knows that Madi will take one look at him and take in the blood soaked through his clothes, the lack of a visible wound, the place at his side where Flint should be standing and won’t be. He knows the conclusion she will come to, can already see how her face will look as her concern fades to fury. He knows he will cry, _I did not kill him._ But the truth is that while James is still alive, John _did,_ in a way, kill Captain Flint, and the denials will sound empty. He knows that in that moment he will have lost her, no matter how desperately he tries to get her to listen to his reasoning.

So: no Madi. No Flint. No gold. Just John, alone and pathetic like he’s always been, maybe forever.

He keeps hearing Flint’s voice in the back of his head – _you will regret this_. An eternity expands in his imagination, all the time in the world with nothing to do but regret it.

It’s almost tempting to let Rackham keep trying to kill him, just to see if eventually something might keep him down.

Instead, he tiredly comes to an agreement with him: they’ll let each other live, and Rackham will tell the Guthries whatever they need to hear with regard to Flint and Silver, except their locations. They’ll return to the island, and they will sign the new treaty, and then they will proceed to keep their distance from each other. It’s not really ideal, but none of this is.

“I will wait,” he tells Madi, “A day, a month, a year, forever, in the hopes that you will understand why I did what I did.”

 _Forever._ He doesn’t know how to explain to her just how literally he means it.

He waits. A day, a month, a year, and then several more. He alternates between giving her space and following her around like a stray dog. She alternates between ignoring him and fighting with him.

They argue regularly at first, about the war and the treaty, about Flint, about what John did and what all of them lost because of it. The fights are often brutal. Sometimes raised voices, sometimes biting whispers, always Madi burning with fury and John alternating between defensiveness and shame. He offers explanations and half-apologies and she rejects both; she pushes at some of his deepest insecurities and he refuses to seem affected. Every day he wonders why she's allowing him to stay at all.

As time passes, her rage simmers off and the periods of tense silence begin to stretch longer. He cannot bring himself to admit defeat by leaving entirely, but resigns himself to giving her more distance.

Madi’s people give him a wide berth. Some, those who supported the treaty, look at him with some degree of respect, or maybe pity. Others, who like Madi had pinned all hopes on a war, don’t bother to hide how much they resent him. A few might be conflicted about how to feel about him – Madi’s mother, for example, had been hesitant about the war to begin with and is grateful that Madi is safe, but is still displeased with many of John’s methods for bringing things to an end, and never liked him much anyway. On the rare occasions when she looks at him at all, he is struck by the strangest sensation that she can see into his very soul and finds him lacking. Regardless of what anyone may think of him, everyone seems quietly puzzled by his continued presence.

The other pirates are gone, though a few – the ones loyal to John, and some connected with Rackham and Bonny and the new government of Nassau – stop by sometimes with news or supplies. Hands had shown interest in remaining by John’s side, but John had told him to stay in Nassau, feeling that his presence may make it even more difficult to win Madi back.

Without Madi as an anchor and without any other companionship, he finds himself adrift, alone in his own spiraling thoughts. He starts wandering around the whole island, ignoring the pain and the darkness of the jungle and the way the maroons stare and whisper when he walks back through the village, leaves tangled in his hair and sweat drenching his shirt.

There's a rocky beach on the far side of the island, and he makes a habit of going there most days. He takes off his boot, walks to the high tide point, and digs his crutch into the ground. He braces himself and stands there until he loses track of time, staring into the horizon over the sea. The jagged stones dig into his flesh, the sun beats down on him, the water rises and licks at his toes and recedes, his arm trembles with the effort of holding him up. Yet even as he tests the limits of what he can endure, he keeps replaying the memories of how they looked at him when he ended everything, and he thinks nothing he does to himself here can come close to what he's already done.

One day he steps further down the shore and just walks into the ocean, wading further and further in until the water envelops him. He fights all his instincts and holds himself down, holds his mouth open like a scream and lets the water fill his lungs, lets his vision dance white and black around the edges.

It makes you scared, Muldoon said, it shows you bad things, it shows you the places you've been and the people you've loved. All that the water is showing John now is Flint, who could control the sky and the sea and men, who shaped him into who he became, who was there in that moment something transformed inside him and made him into whatever he is now that can be wounded but cannot die, who looked him in the eyes and said he would feel regret, whose gaze always seemed capable of casting a curse. It was him, he thinks as consciousness fades away, all of it always comes back to him. He sees flashes of green and then all is black, and he slowly sinks under the waves. 

He wakes lying on his back in the middle of the beach. John Silver has given himself to the ocean, and the ocean has thrown him back. He has drowned, and he is still not dead.

He goes to Savannah.

He doesn’t tell Madi he’s leaving, just quietly boards the next supply boat when it heads back to Nassau and from there quietly boards the next convenient ship. If he’s lucky, she’ll let him come back. If he’s _really_ lucky, she’ll have missed him.

Flint and Thomas Hamilton are not where he left them, which surprises him not at all, but it does not take long for him to find them. When he arrives at their house, they're both outside, but they're working on a garden and don't notice him at first. He watches them for a few minutes, taking in the fact that despite the years that have elapsed Flint somehow seems younger than he remembers – ten years of grieving and fighting had taken a toll on him, and being back with Thomas seems to have lifted the weight of all that off of his shoulders somewhat, restoring him. He takes in the way the sunlight plays with his hair, which has grown long again, and he takes in the curve of his spine as he bends over his work. He takes in the easy partnership he and Thomas obviously have, the way they pass tools between them seemingly without needing to ask.

This is what it was all for, John reflects. This is what Flint was fighting for the right to have. This is what John gave him, what he sacrificed everything for. He watches them laugh about something and tells himself it was worth it.

When Flint finally looks up and sees him, staring at him from the shade of a tree, something crosses his face like he's seeing an apparition. But then John steps forward, and Thomas Hamilton glances up and sucks in a breath, and it's then that Flint realizes he's really there and flies across the yard to punch him hard in the jaw. He falls to the ground and Flint swears and sinks to his knees and pulls him into a tight embrace, and both of them are trembling uncontrollably with rage and sorrow and fear and love and hate.

God, what is he doing? What does he _want?_

John rears back and shoves Flint. They both lose their balance and collapse, and John finds himself lying half on top of Flint, who stares up at him with eyes as wide and deep and green as the sea that refused to kill him. His hands rise up to circle Flint's throat without conscious thought, barely squeezing before Flint throws him off. He gets a grip on his shirt and uses it to drag him back so he can hit him, and Flint growls and hits back. Somewhere Thomas Hamilton is yelling something, but it might as well be water in his ears as they roll around on the ground grappling at each other like particularly brutal children, tugging at hair and getting in punches whenever they can.

“What did you do to me?” he asks through tears. “Why did you do this to me?” he asks with his fists against Flint’s chest.

There is no way for Flint to hear what he does not say, the words about gods and curses and immortality that he cannot quite give voice to, the accusations that would sound insane but must be true.

But he must understand some of it anyway – must recognize that his predictions about Madi were not untrue, must see the grief behind his eyes, must know how much he’s missed him even though he’s the one who took such measures to remove him from his life, must be familiar with how confusing it is to become a monster for the sake of a war and then have that war stripped away and have the monster still there, must remember the ridiculous things he said about Flint causing the storm, might even be able to see the faint outline of the bullet wound on his head.

He must understand some of it, because James shakes his head and grabs his wrists to make him stop fighting and says, "I was only ever a man."

For a moment John thinks about holding onto this _man,_ this person who was once Flint, and never letting go, thinks about staying here and trying to draw out the forgiveness he could never get from Madi, thinks about kissing him, just once, to see whether James would pull him closer or find a way to kill him. For a moment he thinks James would let him.

But he took Flint's war and his freedom, and he gave James a split lip and too many bruises, and his truest love is now a few steps away, and they have a home, and there will never be a space for John Silver there, even if they could somehow forgive him.

He pulls away from him, slowly. He inhales. The air here is thick and hot and smells nothing like the sea, and he burns, suddenly, with the need for this air to be all that fills his lungs for the rest of his cursed life. "I shouldn't have come here," he says.

And Thomas Hamilton looks down at him and says, "No, you shouldn't."

Staring at the ground, he breathes the awful beautiful air in and out a few times and asks, so quietly that James has to sway towards him slightly to hear, "Are you happy?"

"Is that why you came here? To see if I'm happy?"

"I don't know why I came here," he says. "But I would like to know."

"You want to know if I've forgiven you, you mean. You want to know if I hate you for what you did to me."

Shaking his head, he says, "I already know the answer to that." What was it Flint said once? _It has made me transparent to you._ James may not be Flint anymore, but he is still transparent, and the raw emotion is right there on his face. Of course he hates him. Of course he loves him. He forgave him the moment it happened. He will never forgive him as long as he lives. All the contradicting truths are there in his heart, and there will be no reconciliation. "I shouldn't have come here," he repeats. "I will not apologize for saving your life, but I am sorry for coming here like this, and I am sorry if you are not happy. I truly hope someday you will be."

James gives no answer to that, just a tortured look like he wants to return the sentiment but also wants to punch him again.

John stands. 

"Are you leaving?" asks Thomas Hamilton. He nods, and is struck by the sense that Thomas would have been angered by either answer.

James rises too, and hands him his crutch and his bag from where they've fallen, the kindness belied by the frustration in his expression. “Is that it?”

He hesitates. “Will you write something to Madi?”

“Is _that_ what this is about? She won’t forgive you, so you want me to help your case?”

“I don’t care if she forgives me,” he says, which is still only mostly a lie, “Just. She didn’t believe my explanation of what happened and suspects that you’re really dead, and she’s had trouble processing that. I know you were friends, towards the end, so for her sake if not for mine, will you please let me take back a note in your hand telling her that both of you are alive and safe?”

James stares at him for a long moment, then sighs and says gruffly, “Come inside.”

That feels like a bad idea. Part of him is curious about what their home is like, of course, but a much larger part does not want to see it. Seeing him with Thomas, seeing the outside of the house, tasting the air – it’s more than enough. He knows that James has a beautiful loving home here without him. He doesn’t need more details about it.

He follows him in.

There’s a small entry, from which there’s one room on either side; presumably there are another two rooms upstairs, though John doesn’t expect to see those. James leads the way to the left into a sitting room, furnished sparsely but tastefully. At a tired gesture from James, John sits down gingerly in a chair near the fireplace and watches James make his way to a desk in the corner, sit down, and pull out some paper.

Thomas, coming in close behind them, goes to James’s side and a quick whispered conversation ensues. John is usually in the habit of trying to listen in when people might be talking about him – and he wouldn’t need to see the way they both keep glancing over at him to know that they’re talking about him – but they seem to predict that, and speak directly into each other’s ears so softly he can barely hear that they’re speaking at all.

It’s an oddly intimate sight, the way they curve into each other, Thomas resting a possessive yet incredibly gentle hand on the back of James’s neck and leaning in, the two of them taking turns tilting their heads, the speaker’s mouth close enough to the listener’s ear that the breath of their words must be almost a kiss. John can’t look away, even though his chest aches.

After a few minutes Thomas pulls away and sits across from John, and they stare at each other silently with a thin façade of passivity as James’s quill scratches the paper.

Eventually Thomas asks, “Do you truly not intend to offer any sort of real apology?”

“I’m not sorry,” he insists, “And I won’t insult either of you with an apology that’s not genuine.”

“Well, thank God I can always rely on you to be genuine,” James mutters dryly from his desk, and John and Thomas both glance over at him, but he hasn’t looked up from his letter.

“I was always transparent about my motivations, at least with you,” John says, and James snorts but otherwise doesn’t dignify that with a response.

He’s writing more than John anticipated, though maybe he _should_ have anticipated it, since Flint and Madi’s relationship was a complex one with no resolution. And from James’s perspective it’s probably a bonus that dragging this out means subjecting John to extended awkwardness sitting here with Thomas examining him. Bastard.

John drags his gaze from James back to Thomas. “Tell me, Lord Hamilton,” he says, letting his voice go low and dark and smirking at the way Thomas’s eyes widen in response, “What do you truly think of all this? You act as if I should apologize – but do you really disagree with what I did? If you had been there, if you had seen the lengths to which he was willing to go, the violence he was willing to commit, the danger he was willing to put himself in, would you have stood by and let it happen?”

James slams his pen down. “How dare you – how fucking _dare_ you come here and try to stir things up between us?”

“I will not play this game with you, Mr. Silver,” Thomas says coolly.

“It’s not a fucking game, that’s my _point_ ,” John growls.

“Not the war. Not any of the things either of you did. _This._ Your attempt to force us to relive discussions we have already worked through. I do not know what you hope to accomplish, if you yourself even know, but I see no reason to indulge it.”

Throat thick, feeling suddenly like a scolded child, John tries to find words that will come out without tears and without anger, and comes up lacking.

He turns his head to the side, stares at the trinkets on the mantel rather than letting either of them see the turmoil behind his eyes.

A tense few moments, then he hears James start writing again, and for what feels like an eternity they all sit in quiet.

The silence is broken by James asking, “Did you ever truly believe in it?”

John finally looks at him again, even though it hurts. “Of course I did,” he answers, voice raw. “For a while, you had me right there with you. I’d never really believed in anything, I’d always just lived for my next meal, not for anything bigger than myself, but you taught me to believe, you and her. I got so caught up in it. I listened to the two of you talking about the world we could build together, and I liked the image you painted. I wanted to see it. And if anyone could make that world come into being, I believed it was you. But my God, James, the cost was unbearable. I should have been able to see that sooner. The sacrifices it would take to make even a small change, let alone the full cultural reset you wanted? The death, the destruction, the pain? You and Madi were willing to make those sacrifices, and you were willing to sacrifice yourselves to it too. You were willing to let yourselves be burned up from the inside, anything for the sake of the _cause_. But I cannot live like that. I will not. And I will not let you judge me for that.”

Thomas and James exchange a loaded glance that makes him really wish he could have heard some of the discussions they have apparently had about all this. Thomas asks, “So what now?”

“Now?” He laughs, even though nothing about this is funny. The sound is hollow even to his own ears. “Now I am going to take good care not to believe in anything.”

They walk him to the door when James finishes his letter. John doesn’t promise not to read it – he’s not sure how much his promises are worth at this point – but he does not plan to. The curiosity will burn him, but it’s none of his business, and anyway if there’s anything negative about him in there, as there probably is, he doesn’t think he can stand seeing the words in ink. It’s bad enough knowing he’s thinking it.

James catches his wrist as he turns to go, fingers wrapping around and tightening like shackles, like some weak form of retribution.

“Do you regret it?”

“You know the answer to that,” John says carefully. James sighs and releases his hand. John wonders how long he will keep feeling the echo of the touch.

"Will we meet again, John Silver?"

He lets himself take in every inch of his face, committing those eyebrows and freckles and new lines to memory, and then he holds eye contact as long as he can bear, wondering if it’s possible to lose himself in the green of the forest where they fell apart. He tries to grin, that same savagely innocent smile that got him on the damn ship, but what he feels splitting his face is something much softer. He turns away.

"John Silver is dead."

Back at the island, he leaves Madi alone with the letter and heads up to the cliffs, where he stares at the horizon as if it will reveal some sort of secret about the universe.

She finds him a few hours later, and after staring at him for so long he almost starts to squirm, she sighs and tells him to come down to eat. They don’t talk about the letter, but that night she allows him back in her bed for the first time since before she was captured. She does not touch him, but even lying quietly side by side is an intimacy he thought he would never have again from her.

John knows it for what it is: a pardon. Absolution for his crimes, a second chance, but never true forgiveness.

A few nights later, she asks, “Did they seem happy?”

“Didn’t he say one way or the other in whatever he wrote to you?”

“He said many things. But I know how words can distort reality. I am asking what you saw.”

“It was a bit difficult to tell,” he tells her. “I think my presence may have complicated their feelings. But they seemed like they were still very much in love. I could tell that much. And isn’t that close enough?”

“Love is not everything, John,” she sighs, a sentiment she has tried to impart upon him before. But she ponders it with a frown for a few minutes and concedes, “It is something.”

A few more years fade away. John is permitted to stand at Madi’s side in public, but isn’t invited to most important discussions regarding the island’s future or even the situation in Nassau. He’s usually allowed in her bed, but they only rarely fuck. She almost never fights with him anymore, and occasionally even acts affectionate towards him, but sometimes it feels like there’s an enormous distance between them.

He will take whatever table scraps of love he is offered.

Reports start coming in about activity in England, near some of the ports. What kind of activity, John does not know for sure, but for Madi and her mother and Julius to all be as interested as they seem to be, it must have something to do with slavery, not just trade. Whatever it is, apparently there are some people there who could be valuable contacts for the island, with whom relationships should be fostered in person. Madi, it is decided, is the best candidate for this ambassadorship.

The only reason John knows any of this is because the queen has raised concerns about Madi being an unaccompanied young black woman on an overseas voyage and then living in England. While they're both clearly reluctant about it, they've come to the conclusion that she'll be safer with a white man at her side, and John is the obvious choice.

And so he finds himself on a ship to Bristol.

They find an inn that's just been put up for sale at a fairly reasonable price. It's strategic for several reasons – it provides them with a source of income and a place to live at the same time, there's a private meeting space for Madi and her contacts, it's close to the docks, and Nassau certainly demonstrated how useful a tavern can be for making its owners aware of the town's gossip – but John suspects that Madi was also perversely entertained by the idea of making him be a cook again.

She cries, the first night there. They’re still sharing a bed – even if they hadn’t been, they would need to now to keep up appearances; they're pretending to be married, since it's better than letting people assume she's his slave – so he witnesses it. She's curled up faced away from him, and manages to stay almost completely silent, but he can see her body shaking like a leaf.

He has seen her deeply distressed before, of course, on several occasions. She is the strongest and most composed person he has ever known, but unlike him she has never been ashamed to show when she is afraid or in pain, at least among those she trusts, and he used to be near the top of that list. But until this moment he has never seen her so intensely vulnerable, so delicate. Or maybe the real difference is that it's the first time he hasn't been sure whether he’s allowed to reach out to her, and he's projecting his own helplessness onto her.

His arms ache to reach out, to wrap around her, to give her comfort, but it's late enough that she almost certainly intentionally waited until she thought he was asleep. To touch her, or to say something, to do anything to acknowledge that this is happening, would only be a further intrusion on top of the initial intrusion of seeing it at all.

Trying to keep his breathing even, he moves a bit closer. It could almost be conceived as changing positions in his sleep, but Madi stills, and he knows he's caught. "Sorry," he mutters.

She sighs and rolls over. "It truly baffles me, the things you will and will not apologize for." He doesn't answer, and she says, "Stop looking like I'm going to hurt you, John."

He shifts and lifts his arm, and she shuffles over and tucks herself into his embrace, resting her chin on his chest.

"Will you tell me what's bothering you?" he asks.

Madi is silent for so long he thinks she's either decided not to tell him or fallen asleep, but then she says, "I know that it was hard for you to fully comprehend what my people were fighting for, back then." He makes a noise in the back of his throat and she nudges him. "I'm not having that argument tonight. My point is that one of the crimes that England has committed against us is stripping us from our homes and our families. And here I am, away from my mother, my father's grave, and all of our people, in the country responsible for all that suffering."

It's true that he can probably never comprehend it – the depth of trauma Madi's people know, the pain and anger that lived on after he removed the outlet for them, the importance of a family and a home when the nearest he has had to either was probably the Walrus – but he recognizes it, and he knows that this must be unspeakably difficult for her.

"Have you only ever been to the Maroon Camp and Nassau?" he asks, because homesickness, while still foreign to him, is easier to address than the rest of it.

"I have seen a few towns on some of the other islands in the area, but nowhere else. Certainly not England."

Bristol must be astonishing, then. The architecture is so different, and the paved streets, and the November chill that sinks to the bones of a person used to the Caribbean. He pulls the blanket tighter around them both. "I grew up here."

He has told her about as much about his youth as he told Flint, which is to say, next to nothing. This is an offering and he knows she knows it. She props herself up on his chest so she can see his face, but says nothing.

"Not here, specifically," John clarifies. "I've never been to Bristol. But I don't think it was far away, and from what I remember the two towns seem fairly similar."

"I find it difficult to imagine you as a child," says Madi, a hint of a smile pulling at the corner of her lips. "Or as an Englishman, I suppose. It's easier to picture you bursting to life fully formed on his ship one day."

"In a way, I did." She raises her eyebrows and he clears his throat. "I told him once that my past was irrelevant to who I was and what we were doing. I don't think he was satisfied with that answer, but I really felt it was true. He was driven by what was taken from him. You were driven by what was done to your people. For both of you, everything in your present and future was explained by your past. But the things I did, who I was and where I was from, had no great narrative purpose for me, and my identity changed constantly. The version of me who you know did not exist in any recognizable form until the moment I found the Urca's schedule."

 _His_ ship. He told _him. He_ wasn't satisfied. They rarely say his name. Flint. McGraw. James. He's still something they're always dancing around, flinching from. In the beginning, when they fought so often about all of what happened, sometimes the argument would die down and they would have hours or days of peace and then it would explode again out of nowhere, Flint's absence acting like flint sparking a flame. Even then his name was hardly ever spoken between them, because neither of them could voice it without cracking. Later, when the fights faded into avoidance, on the occasions they could bring themselves to speak to each other at all it was never about _him._ Still he hung over every interaction like a ghost, and no amount of insisting he lived, not even the letter, could make that haunted feeling disappear. And now, in this state of cool acceptance they have finally reached – arguments set aside but not forgotten, married but mostly in name, the loss of both James and the war always raw but less fresh, angry but only some of the time, often happy but not completely – they are able, on occasion, to talk about him without giving in to the urge to either rage or weep, but invoking his name is still too much.

"I know you believe that," she says in a tone that suggests that she does not believe it, "But it is not true anymore, is it?"

Of course it is not. Maybe he can argue that his early history is irrelevant, but who he was as John Silver, pirate king, crewmate and friend and betrayer of James Flint, lover and betrayer of Madi Scott, will shape everything else for however long he lives, no matter how much he hates it. 

It's cruel of her to point it out, to comment on the bond tying him to Flint that he tied himself and only made stronger when he tried to sever it, and the relationship with her that he valued highly enough to spoil everything. She knows it, too, and presses a kiss to his shoulder as if that could ease the tension. They don't speak any more that night.

Their stay in Bristol was expected to take a few months.

But whatever Madi is doing goes so well that she wants to stay a bit longer to see it through, and then it takes a turn for the worse so she needs to get things under control. Then a letter from the Maroon Camp reports that there has been some unrest in the area related to the treaty and it might be safer for Madi to stay away for the time being, and then things there get better but Madi is told that everything is going well enough that she need not rush back. Several of John's surviving pirate allies had come to England with them, for a variety of reasons, and John finds himself mediating some conflicts between them and trying to keep them from getting in trouble with the locals, but once those initial personality clashes are resolved they end up settling in better than anyone could have predicted. The inn starts doing surprisingly well and they feel compelled to take advantage and save up some money. They both make a few friends. Living as husband and wife makes their relationship warmer again and John can't stand to disrupt that. An abolitionist group forms nearby and of course Madi has to get involved immediately. One reason to extend the stay arises after another, and months become a year, and one year becomes many.

John finds that he actually enjoys being an innkeeper; it gives him an audience for his stories and a source for new material, and even cooking isn’t too bad when it’s not just porridge and whole pigs. Somehow some of the regulars – led by a few of the survivors from the Walrus, the fucking traitors – get it into their heads to nickname him Barbeque, and he tolerates it because of the way it always makes Madi shake her head and purse her lips like she’s trying not to laugh.

He acquires a parrot, a lovely red and blue beast brought in by an old sailor who had once sailed with her under the pirate Captain England but after many years was getting tired of her squawking. She can talk, usually either swears or cryptic phrases about treasure, and she takes to John immediately, often electing to sit on his shoulder and shed feathers into his cooking. Madi is less than fond of her, quietly asking John if his devotion to the aesthetic of a pirate is really necessary even in his retirement, and that displeasure only deepens when he decides to name her Captain Flint.

Later he won’t be sure what possessed him to choose that name. He and Madi were going through a bit of a rough patch when the bird was given to him, so maybe he was trying to hurt her, or maybe he was just lonely and wanted a reminder of a man he’s always missing. The reasoning matters little. Madi flinches whenever he says the name. The patrons of the tavern laugh like it’s a joke. And Barbeque just smiles and acts like pieces of himself aren’t broken.

"I cannot help but notice," Madi says one night, voice hushed, "That you do not appear to be aging much."

He has been thinking it, too. When he looks in a mirror, he sees a face that, other than the almost imperceptible outline of a bullet hole, is mostly unchanged. He thought little of it at first, but now he and Madi are in their forties. Certainly not _old_ , but old enough to be showing some change. Madi's face has some deepening lines, and the first traces of gray are streaking through her hair. But he looks about as young as he did on Skeleton Island.

"I don't know if I can die," he whispers. He tells her about the earthquake he felt inside him, and Jack's two attempts on his life, and just how deeply serious he was about waiting forever for her forgiveness. She is silent beside him.

"I don't know what it means," he says – lies; he knows it must be a punishment for what he did – and she turns on her side and politely does not tell him how stupid he is,and they don't discuss it again, even as the disparity in their ages grows enough that some of the people of Bristol begin to look at him with a bit more suspicion.

The pirates, always a superstitious bunch, are cheerful enough about adding it to the mythos of Long John Silver. He overhears one of them whispering, “I heard that he and Captain Flint were both devils, not men, that Silver was born fully formed out of Flint’s blood and that’s what let them control each other when nobody else could.” Not the only story he’s caught them trading about him, but one that made him roll his eyes particularly hard. James would fucking hate it, of course. John is mostly just exhausted.

It’s an unassuming evening when things are turned on their head once more. Early fall, 1734. Nearly twenty years since – everything. It would be nice if he could go a day without thinking about what he lost back then, but otherwise things are good. Madi has run out of energy to devote to resenting him, and the inn is doing well.

This night is cool but vibrant, everyone in high spirits. John and Madi are peacefully standing side by side behind the bar, filling glasses, when old Tom Morgan turns up.

Morgan has been in Savannah. He has family in the area, so he makes the trip every few years, and he usually checks on James while he’s there. John doesn’t want to know details, just whether he’s alive, and Morgan is perfectly willing to oblige, especially with the money John gives in exchange for keeping Flint’s location secret.

For years, the reports he gives upon his return have mostly just consisted of a meaningful nod from across the inn. This year, though, he bursts into the inn with an expression that immediately makes both John and Madi stiffen.

He heads straight for them, but is intercepted by some of his friends rising to greet him.

“What news, Tom?” asks one of the old Walrus men.

Glancing nervously at John and Madi, he announces, “The gossip over there is saying that Flint is dead.”

Madi had been pouring a drink, and it spills all over the counter; she sets the bottle down hard and grabs a cloth with subtly trembling hands. John reaches blindly for the stool they keep back here and sits down heavily.

The words echo harshly around his skull. _Flint is dead. Flint is dead, Flint is dead._

_Flint._

_Dead._

And yet, that’s not exactly what he said, is it? No, there was a qualifier: _the gossip_. Fuck gossip. He needs to know the truth. He doesn’t think he can stand to know the truth. Hope and curiosity and deep despair mingle in his chest. His heartbeat is roaring in his ears, and he tries to push down the panic so he can listen to the questions the other pirates are shouting and Tom’s answers.

“I thought he was already dead?” “No, he retired.” “Didn’t he just disappear?”

“They’re saying he was alive, but is dead now.”

“When?” “How?”

“July. Drank himself to death, apparently. They say his last words were, ‘Darby McGraw! Fetch aft the fucking rum, Darby!’”

The men crow, but John frowns. That’s… odd, to say the least. For starters, it doesn’t really sound like Flint’s speech patterns. More importantly, John doesn’t know who the fuck Darby is, but McGraw is _him_ , so why would he be yelling for himself? And how would other people know about it? And why does it sound like Tom Morgan is carefully reciting something he’s been told to repeat?

John stands back up shakily and says, “Tom, a word in private?”

Some of the men boo, but Morgan nods and follows him back to the meeting room, Madi trailing behind them, leaving their waitress to keep an eye on things.

“What really happened?” John demands when they’re alone.

“Sorry for that,” Tom says. “I’d hoped to get a chance to talk to you before breaking the news to everyone else.”

“So it’s true?”

“Ah, in a way.”

“What does that mean, Mr. Morgan?” asks Madi. “Is he dead, or is he not?”

“As far as the world's concerned he is."

"What the fuck does that mean?"

"Well, to start at the beginning, you're not going to believe this, but while I was over there, I ran into Billy."

John's blood runs cold. "Billy Bones?”

“Aye.”

“He fell off the fucking mast."

"If I may, sir, he survived a fall off a ship before. I don't know how he made his way off the island, but I'm telling you I saw him in Savannah, sure enough, and he was no ghost."

"Jesus Christ. And he was looking for Flint?"

Morgan nods. "No clue how he found out he was there, but he and I happened to show up outside Flint's door right at the same time. Don't know which of us was more surprised. Anyway, Flint and Hamilton weren’t pleased to see Billy when they opened the door, but after they each threw a few good punches, Flint agreed to talk to him alone all the same. I don’t rightly know all that was said between them, but after a while Billy came out looking like he won something and went on his way. Flint looked grim as hell, said Billy had a map of Skeleton Island and wanted him to mark where the treasure was."

Exchanging a tense look with Madi, John asks, “And did he?”

“Well, he didn’t tell me that, but that look on Billy’s face says to me he did.”

“And was that it? With Flint, I mean?”

“Had me leave and come back the next day, he did. I think he must have wanted to talk some things over with his gentleman, because that next day they told me they’d be disappearing, and they wanted me to help by spreading the story that he’d died. I didn’t ask too many questions, but he emphasized that I should try and make sure as many people as possible hear about it, so seems to me maybe they were afraid of Billy coming after them again and wanted him to think he was gone.”

“But wouldn’t Billy question that? If he’d seen him right before he supposedly died from too much rum and he was fine then?”

“I think he might’ve pretended to be drunk when he was talking to him.”

Of course. Fucking manipulative shit, always thinking several steps ahead of everyone else. God, John misses seeing his cleverness in action.

Morgan resumes, “Also, if you ask me, Billy looked like he’d had too many bottles himself.”

“Were we meant to believe the story about Flint’s death as well?” Madi cuts in softly.

“He didn’t say one way or the other, ma’am.”

Her face is impressively impassive. God fucking knows what John’s own face is doing. He says, “Thank you, Tom. You can go back to the men.”

He nods and exits the room, leaving behind a tangible silence. There’s a lot to process. Flint. Billy fucking Bones back from the dead again, but maybe on the way to drinking himself back the other way. A map to the cache. James not caring whether or not John and Madi think he’s dead.

John is still trying to decide what to address first when the parrot flies in and screeches, “Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!”

“Pieces of eight, indeed,” John echoes, musing.

Madi looks at him sharply and says, “ _No._ ”

“…I’m sorry?”

“You are not going to try to find the cache. _You_ put an end to all that. You will not drag us back into it now.”

“I wanted an end to the _war_. The _money_ , on the other hand, could change our lives in a positive way. Could take care of your people for years. Why would you not want that?”

“It was all tied together and you know it. That part of our lives was buried in the ground right along with the chest. It has been too long, and it has been too difficult to come to a sort of peace with that, for you to dig it up now. You made a choice to give up the cache and everything it symbolized, and we all must live with that choice. _You_ must live with that choice.”

“There is no need for it to be tied together anymore! We could find the map, go retrieve the cache, and bring it back to the maroon camp. All you have to do is spend it on supplies for survival instead of weapons. It’s that simple. Not everything has to be a metaphor.”

“And you believe that it would be that simple to retrieve? That you could track down Billy Bones and take the map from him, without it resulting in conflict? That you would not be pulled back to the pirate life by the thrill of adventure, attracted by the draw of those darker parts of yourself which you claim lie in the past? How many have died for the pursuit of that treasure? Was it not you who was most unwilling to accept the continuation of that trend? How many more casualties will there be if you pursue it once more, and will you be able to live with them?”

He swallows. She’s right, he knows she’s right. But that old sickness of his, that inability to ignore an opportunity, cannot be cured so easily.

“Pieces of eight,” says Captain Flint, and Madi scowls at them both.

“I am trying to help,” John says stubbornly. “All this time, you have criticized me for being selfish, taking opportunities from your people. Now I try to make it right, try to be selfless, and you don’t like that either.”

“It is not your right to decide what is best for my people.”

That’s a familiar refrain, and he knows better than to try to respond to it by now. He stays silent – there have been so many silences between them – and lets Captain Flint nibble his finger.

Madi watches him for a long, long moment. Eventually she sighs, “Please promise me, John, that you will let this lie.”

Instead of answering aloud, he walks over to her and places a lingering kiss on her forehead.

When he pulls away, she looks devastatingly disappointed in him. But that is nothing new.

He spends all of three days deliberating about whether it’s worth it to betray Madi – again – and find Billy and his damn map, but in the end it’s barely his decision.

The pirates have spent those three days pestering Tom Morgan about what happened in Savannah and talking amongst themselves, and finally, on a night when Madi is in the back room with some of her allies, they raise the subject with John.

“Tom says Billy’s got a map,” says Black Dog. “Me an’ the men’ve been chatting, and we thinks maybe we should see about one last big voyage on the account.”

Black Dog – birth name Alex Rush, and John’s never been clear on the origin of the nickname – is one of the old Walrus men, as is blind old Jack Pew at his side, and several of the others gathered around nodding. Which means that they were there at Skeleton Island back then. They floundered in a blood-saturated sea, surrounded by the flaming remains of their ship and the corpses of most of their friends, and now they want to go back there? John wishes he could say he doesn’t understand the impulse at all.

“Don’t let my wife hear you talking about that,” he says, mildly but with authority.

They all promise she won’t hear a thing – “But we are doing it, right?”

He can’t stop thinking about Flint. He thinks of him predicting, cruelly, that the comfort would grow stale, that he would _cast about in the dark for proof he mattered_ … Maybe John isn’t the only one feeling the truth of that. The other pirates usually act crassly cheerful, but they are survivors too, and of course they must be plagued by what happened, and by what didn’t happen. Perhaps they, too, are desperate for it all to have been worth something. Letting the exhilaration of the hunt back into their blood, returning to say a proper goodbye to their fallen comrades, and recovering even a small share of the treasure they were once promised might help with that.

Or maybe they’re just greedy for money of any sort. Who can say, really?

He glances reluctantly back at the door of the meeting room for only a minute, and tells his crew, “See if you can – subtly – figure out where Billy’s gone, and then we’ll see.”

It’s Israel Hands who finds him, a few months later. Probably had to be; the others have plenty of enthusiasm, but – bless them – are really not very smart.

Madi hadn’t wanted Hands to join them in Bristol. They never liked each other much, and she’d thought him a bad influence on John, the most likely to persuade him to become Long again. She will get no satisfaction from being proved right.

Anyway Hands comes to John in January with a glint in his eye. He doesn’t give details into how he tracked Billy down, which John doesn’t really care about anyway, just tells him he’s staying at an inn by a cove a few hours away.

So close – it’s almost like John was meant to find him.

He sends Black Dog to see Billy, give him a little fright, let him know Long John Silver is on to him, ask about the map. Black Dog agrees with gusto and departs in high spirits, but comes back the next day grumbling about a wound to his shoulder; apparently he and Billy came to blows.

“I take it he didn’t want to part with the map,” John says wryly, handing over a strong drink which Black Dog downs immediately.

“He surely did not.” Looking suddenly more cheerful, he adds, “But you should’ve seen the look on his face when he laid eyes on me. Didn’t even have to say anything to scare the wits out of him, like he saw a ghost. Good ol’ Bill, he knows what’s what, he don’t have to be told that we haven’t forgotten how he turned on his crew.”

“What’s his situation there? Is he in good health? Does he have friends? If we were to put more pressure on him, would he put up much opposition, and would anyone come to his aid against us?”

“Oh, he looked in bad shape to me. He’s a drunk now, pretty far gone. He’s angrier than he used to be, but his fighting’s worse. This slice he got on me was mostly luck. He tried getting me again as I made my retreat, and got his sword stuck on the signpost. I was almost embarrassed for him. As for mates, he seemed to get along all right with a boy there, the innkeeper’s child. Doubt there’s anyone else who cares much about him.”

“All right,” says John, and then Madi enters the inn carrying a basket from the market. John gives the pirates a sharp look that was meant to convey that they shouldn’t keep talking about Billy Bones, but what they seem to get from it is that they should fall entirely silent. Of course, that’s far more suspicious, and he sighs as Madi squints at them. “Hello, love of my life,” he calls, suitably overdramatic to make the men laugh at him, which distracts her from thinking anything is amiss. God, he’s going to go to hell if he ever manages to die. This moment, this deception, will be very low down on the list of his sins – but it will be there.

It’s a few days before he can orchestrate any further action related to Billy. It seems that Madi is always at his side, something he would otherwise never even consider complaining about. Eventually, though, she goes out for something and the men swarm him for their orders.

He can’t go anywhere himself, of course – he would never be able to justify it to Madi, and anyway he needs to run the inn – so he sends Jack Pew and seven of the others. One of them will go deliver a black spot to Billy, and the rest of them will come back later that night to take what they feel is owed them from him – the map, certainly, but also whatever money he has on him, and probably his life.

It gives John pause, authorizing such a thing, in part because he had put that kind of behavior behind him. He never wanted to be responsible for anyone’s deaths; that was obviously a lost cause long ago, but he’d hoped there would never be any _more_. He tries not to think about how this is exactly what Madi warned him about.

The fact that it is Billy, specifically, who he is condemning also bothers him. He does not want it to bother him. Billy was more than willing to let everyone John loved die. And yet there was a time when John considered him a close friend. He hates him now, but it also distresses him, profoundly, to think of losing him.

But these men would not let this go. They would go after Billy even if John did not give them instruction. All he can hope to do is keep control of them.

So he writes a warning on the back of a black spot – the first one he’s ever actually sent anyone, for all those attributed to him – and sends them on their way and waits for them to get back, nervous with anticipation but not knowing what outcome he wants.

What he’s not expecting is for seven of the eight men to return in a state of great agitation, explaining once he gets them into a private room that they gave Billy the black spot but he was already dead when they came back for him, that someone else – the innkeeper’s boy, they think – had already taken the map, and that Pew is dead, killed – possibly accidentally – by revenue officers.

They do have Billy’s money bag, and some silver from the inn’s till, but not a very satisfying revenge and certainly not a way of finding the cache.

“All is lost,” sulks one of the men.

“Well, that’s not true,” John counters. “Whoever found the map will soon figure out just what it is they have, and if they’ve got any sense at all, they’ll be eager to seek out that treasure. They’ll need a ship and crew for that, and where will they have to go to find them?” They just stare at him, and he tries not to roll his eyes. “Bristol, gentlemen. They’ll come _here_. All we have to do is keep an ear out for people making voyages, and make ourselves available.”

That cheers the men right up, and sure enough, it’s not long before John runs into a very excited and very unwise squire, John Trelawney, by the docks and he readily admits that he’s trying to engage a treasure-hunting mission.

“And you, sir?” the fellow asks almost as an afterthought at the end of a long-winded stream of thought about himself, “What brings you down to the docks today?”

Donning one of his friendliest smiles, he says, “Oh, I was a sailor in days gone by. That’s how I lost this, you know –” here he pats his left thigh, and watches Trelawney’s face turn sympathetic as for once he’d hoped it would – “I was serving good old England under Admiral Hawke, got it blasted off in a fight – don’t even get a pension now.”

“Indeed! No pension? Abominable, I say!”

“Not one shilling, but that’s neither here nor there. I keep an inn here nowadays, which is all well and good, but the sailor’s life never really lets you go. Being ashore is no good for my health. I wanted a smell of the salt – that’s why I came down here this morning. That, and I’m hoping I can get myself a berth as a cook so I can get back to sea.”

Trelawney is visibly moved, and falls over himself to offer John the position on his own voyage on the _Hispaniola_ ; John pretends to be surprised by the offer, and graciously accepts, adding that – if it would be no imposition – he knows all the seafaring men in Bristol and would be happy to help the squire assemble the rest of his crew.

He is quick to agree, and over the next few days they engage a fine crew, which – unknown to the squire, of course – is mostly made up of John’s pirate followers. Black Dog is unable to come, because the innkeeper’s son, Jim Hawkins, has been engaged as cabin boy and would surely recognize him. Black Dog is understandably despondent about the situation, and would just as soon kill the boy and make it look like an accident, but reluctantly agrees to stay behind when John promises him a share anyway; John has no intention of following through on this promise but no one needs to know that.

John’s other occupation is making arrangements for his departure from Bristol. The crew isn’t supposed to know that the voyage is a treasure-hunting cruise – yes, Trelawney told him, but he clearly wasn’t supposed to, and may not even realize he did – which means that the crew will be getting very small shares of the prize, if they’re given anything at all. Obviously, the pirates won’t stand for that, which means Long John Silver will inevitably be the leader of a mutiny, after which he will not be able to come back to England, unless he wishes to be hanged. (He does not; presumably it wouldn’t kill him, but he is not interested in finding out what it feels like, or submitting to the questions his survival would raise.) If he cannot return here, then Madi will not be able to stay; so he must arrange for the inn to be sold, for her to have a place on a ship back to Nassau, and for the money they have in banks to be withdrawn. All of this must take effect just as he leaves, and in such a way as to avoid raising suspicion that would send the _Hispaniola_ ’s consort after them or cause retaliation against Madi.

It’s a delicate situation, and he knows that now would be a good time to tell Madi what he is doing. Oh, she will be incandescently angry, and try vehemently to stop him, but there will be little she can actually do about it, and it will be better for him if he gives her a bit of warning, tries to explain himself, and lets her be involved in the final plans.

But he has always been a coward.

A few weeks after he first met Trelawney, the boy Hawkins shows up at the Spy-glass with a message from the squire that they are to come aboard by that afternoon and sail the next day; there’s an incident when the child catches a glimpse of Black Dog and starts shouting, but after Black Dog makes his escape, the rest of them succeed in convincing the boy that they have no involvement with him, and after that it’s very easy for John to charm him. The two of them go off to the other inn where the squire and his doctor friend, Livesey, are staying, where John recounts the story about the wicked Black Dog infiltrating his establishment and slipping through his fingers. His frankness and obvious honesty proves him the most trustworthy man they could possibly have on their crew, and they’re all grinning at him like he’s an old friend when he departs to make final preparations.

Returning to the Spy-Glass, he makes sure all hands who will be joining the cruise are informed that they are to be on the ship by four, then he sits down to finish writing a letter to Madi which he has been drafting for weeks.

There is nothing he could say that could be enough. He explains the logistics of how things are going to go over the next few days; he gives justifications she will not accept and declarations of love that he prays she will. He tries to balance words that he hopes will placate her and words he means. He tells her where to meet him and when, and desperately assures her that he intends to spend the rest of her life with her, that this transgression is not a betrayal of their life together but rather something he is doing _for_ them. He writes four pages, front and back, even though he has never cared much for writing, and he knows that it is not enough.

He finds her cleaning in the back room.

“Something has come up that Rainer needs my assistance with,” he tells her, naming a friendly acquaintance who has absolutely nothing to do with what he’s doing. It is a more direct lie than he likes to tell her, but there is nothing for it: he must establish and explain his absence tonight so she does not go looking for him and find the _Hispaniola_. “I have to go, and I’ll likely be out quite late.”

“Fine,” she says absently. “Give him my regards.”

Stepping closer, he catches one of her hands and pulls her in for a kiss. “I love you.”

She rarely says it back and does not do so now, but she smiles and squeezes his hand. “I will see you tonight, John.”

He steals one last kiss, and leaves before she can notice that he does not confirm that. He slides the letter under her pillow, where she will not find it until it is too late, and then he says a silent farewell to their beautiful inn and makes his way to the ship.


	2. Chapter 2

Through all the preparations for this journey, John had somehow not stopped to consider what it would actually be like to be a sailor again. The answer, it seems, is fucking exhausting.

Now he has to prepare supper – something he has considerable experience with, and has greatly improved at, but it’s still work. Now it is his responsibility to oversee young Jim Hawkins. Now he is asked to sing a fucking shanty. Now he must help with general ship’s business. Now it is time for breakfast. Now the galley needs cleaning. At all hours of the day there is something that requires his attention, and on top of everything else, it is important for him to always be talking to everyone, monitoring and influencing the attitudes of the crew.

The matter of the mutiny which will need to be carried out later is simplified in some ways and complicated in others by the fact that the non-pirate segment of the crew has had internal tension from the beginning. Trelawney and the captain, Smollett, do not get along. Smollett, who John does not know personally but who appears to be both a good man and a good captain, is justifiably skeptical about the reason for the trip and about the men who have been chosen – without his input – to sail it. This suspicion, however, along with a refusal to play favorites among the crew, has deeply offended both the squire and Jim Hawkins, who has decided that John is the very best of men and should be treated with the appropriate respect. Jim is subtle about his distaste above decks, going about his posts without complaint and only speaking out within the privacy of the galley. Trelawney and Smollett, on the other hand, are quite open about their misgivings about each other, and Smollett barely engages with the crew; all in all, it’s a recipe for the chain of command to be easily disrupted, especially when one takes the first mate into account.

The mate, Arrow, is not a pirate, but John did select him, quite deliberately. He’s a competent hand, so he’ll be useful for the voyage for a bit, but he’s also inclined to be overly familiar with the men, which has the double effect of pleasing the pirates by giving them leave to do more or less what they want, and irritating the captain, therefore fostering the divisiveness that they’ll eventually exploit. Furthermore, he has a head for drink, which John takes advantage of by secretly supplying him with rum to the point of drunkenness which interferes with his work and disgraces him in the view of the other officers, and which eventually results in his going overboard one night. John is fairly sure that was a genuine accident, and not one of his men killing him in response to some order-by-look that John didn’t know he was giving; if that is not the case, he thinks he would rather not know. Either way, the incident provides an opening for the acting coxswain, Israel Hands – John’s primary lieutenant – and boatswain, Job Anderson, also a pirate, to play more active roles on the ship, which has the potential to be convenient for them.

As they get closer to their destination, John takes it upon himself to speak individually with most of the men he’s going to need for the mutiny, to make sure they’re fully on his side. This is easy enough with most of the pirates, who are more than ready and have already voted to make him their de facto captain, but it also involves a careful seduction of some of the honest men; he has to tell them what they’re planning and convince them both that they should not tell anyone and that they should agree to take part. This is not difficult for the most part, as some of the men have a heart for adventure that makes them forget about morals, others are simply exhausted of the current leadership, and all want to increase their shares of the cache.

The last of these conversations comes one evening when they’re about a day away from the island, with Dick Johnson, the youngest hand aside from Jim. Dick is no more than twenty, and has never engaged in piracy himself, but he’s been talking with the others and has got all kinds of romanticized notions of the account that John isn’t going to discourage if they make him enthusiastic enough to be helpful.

John finds himself answering his questions by making largely fictional or exaggerated claims about his pirating career, and Flint’s name comes up. Actually, he’s the one who mentioned him, and he doesn’t know why, because it always opens the door to conversational areas he doesn’t like. _The flower of the flock_ , Dick calls Flint admiringly, and what the fuck does that even mean? John tries to steer the subject away from Flint and toward his own financial situation, also exaggerated.

Dick asks him if his money isn’t gone now, since he won’t be able to show his face in Bristol anymore, and he says that his wife has it. Can he trust her? asks Dick.

“Gentlemen of fortune usually trust little among themselves, and right they are,” John acknowledges, using a euphemism for pirates that he picked up from who knows where a few years ago. He tells him, in the colorful way of phrasing that’s expected of him, that people who know him know not to mess with him. To illustrate this point, he says, “There was some that was feared of Pew, and some that was feared of Flint; but Flint his own self was feared of me. Feared he was, and proud.”

There he is talking about Flint _again_ , what the fuck is wrong with him? Is it the proximity to the island? The man is dead. Can’t he get out of his head?

But of course, he isn’t dead. He and Thomas are hiding who knows where, under who knows what names, doing who knows what, probably not thinking about John Silver at all. He’d probably be furious to hear that John is telling people that he was afraid of him.

Wasn’t he, though? Not in the same way other people were afraid of them, but in a different sort of way, weren’t they afraid of each other? James allowed John to see every part of him, good and bad, and they both knew very well what kind of power that gave him over him. How could that not be frightening?

Dick is staring at him with wide eyes, so he clears his throat and continues with something suitably impressive about how Flint and Silver’s crew was more vicious than the devil, in large part because of John himself.

It does the job. Dick declares himself convinced, and with that taken care of, John calls Israel Hands over.

Israel isn’t surprised that Dick is with them, and is more interested in knowing when they’re going to get rid of Captain Smollett and the squire and doctor. The answer he would like to hear is clearly _now_ ; he wants to get into the cabin and enjoy the finer goods the captain has kept to himself.

A little irritated – Hands never used to care much about petty shit like wine, and it made him a better ally – John explains that the mutiny will be happening at the absolute last moment, because they still have need of Smollett and the others. Without the map, none of the pirates will know how to set a course, let alone find the treasure. Personally, John would like to delay until they’re _back_ at sea, well away from the island, but he’ll settle for once they have the cache on the ship.

“Easy all, Long John, who's crossing you?” Hands asks, as if John’s frustration with the men’s impatience is irrational, as if he needs to be calmed. Bristling, John argues that he would not prioritize alcohol over avoiding a noose, and Hands has the nerve to say that there have been other pirates – the implication being _better_ pirates? – who were as good at sailing but more _fun_ than him. “They wasn't so high and dry, nohow,” he says, “But took their fling, like jolly companions every one.”

The image of Israel Hands partying would be fucking comical if John was less angry, and they both know it, which suggests this little speech is for Dick’s benefit. Why? They’ve all been deliberately acting up the swashbuckler routine a bit, and perhaps going a bit over the top, so is it just that? Or is he trying to undermine John’s authority?

“Well, and where are they now?” John asks rhetorically. “Pew was that sort, and he died a beggar-man. Flint was, and he died of rum at Savannah. Ah, they was a sweet crew, they was! Only, where are they?”

Mentioning Flint, this time, has more of a purpose than when he mentioned him to Dick a few minutes ago. It’s a lie which will fool Dick but not Hands – like hell was Flint what Hands or anyone else would call a “jolly companion” – which transforms it into a sort of code. It could mean a few different things. Speaking derisively of Flint could remind Hands that there was a time when he believed that John was the greatest man to follow, and also that even if he now inexplicably thinks John is weak, he was strong enough to cut himself out of that alliance. Bringing up Flint’s supposed death could remind him that even the most powerful pirates can be destroyed easily – and by alcohol, no less – so perhaps they should not be so fucking hasty to trade security for wine. The comment could also be a warning: if you want a different kind of man leading you, be careful who you wish for.

Hands squints at him, but neither of them can say any more on that subject because Dick cuts in to ask what they’ll do about the deposed men.

John makes himself grin. “There's the man for me! That's what I call business. Well, what would you think? Put 'em ashore like maroons? That would have been England's way. Or cut 'em down like that much pork? That would have been Flint's, or Billy Bones’s.”

“Billy was the man for that,” Hands agrees. “‘Dead men don't bite,’ says he. Well, he’s dead now hisself; he knows the long and short on it now; and if ever a rough hand come to port, it was Billy.”

“Right you are. Rough and ready,” John says, even though really he’s not sure how much he agrees with that assessment of Billy’s attitude. Certainly he never hesitated to follow through on the threat of a black spot, but John never heard him say that dead men don’t bite, and Hands never actually directly interacted with Billy as far as he’s aware. Not particularly important, though; it’s enough that apparently Hands is already back to backing him up. He resumes, “But mark you here, I'm an easy man – I'm quite the gentleman, says you; but this time it's serious. Duty is duty, mates. I give my vote – death. When I'm in Parliament and riding in my coach, I don't want none of these sea-lawyers in the cabin coming home, unlooked for, like the devil at prayers. Wait is what I say; but when the time comes, why, let her rip!”

“John, you're a man!”

“You'll say so, Israel when you see. Only one thing I claim – I claim Trelawney. I'll wring his calf's head off his body with these hands.”

Really, he doesn’t have anything against Trelawney. The squire is a weak leader and a fool, but he’s nice enough. But it’s a sign of strength for him to make demands, and for him to replace the leader of the expedition with himself. And it’s good for his image for both Hands and Dick to hear him express a willingness to be vicious. Dick does look sufficiently awed, but also a little afraid, so John asks him to fetch an apple, and then peaceably hands him the key to the keg when Israel suggests he have him fetch some rum instead.

“He’ll be the last recruit,” Hands mutters to him while they wait for Dick to return. “The others on the crew will barely talk to us, they won’t turn on each other. Not another man of 'em will join.”

“Just as well. Fewer men, larger shares of the cache.”

Dick comes back with the rum, and they’re barely through with toasting when the lookout hollers, “LAND HO!” and all hands rush onto the deck to get a glimpse of the island.

The sight of the island, when John gets to the rail, knocks his fucking breath out of him for a second. It’s just the same as he remembers it looking that first time he saw it, complete with a gently ominous layer of fog twisting around.

It’s beautiful, in an aching, terrifying sort of way. And now that he’s made it here, John finds that he wants nothing more than to turn back around to Bristol.

Most of the details of the excursion aren’t important, really. It’s not worth dwelling on how tensions rise as they prepare to go ashore, until John is once more holding a crew together with both hands. It’s not worth dwelling on how quickly things fall apart. It’s not worth dwelling on the rush of something, something familiar, something terrible, something intoxicating, something dark, just like when he killed Dufresne, that rises within him the first time he has to kill someone again. This is exactly what Madi warned him about. Succumbing to the draw of this feeling. And this time he has no anchor or tether. But all that matters is that he successfully pulls himself together and moves forward.

The details aren’t important, but suffice to say the excursion does not go particularly well. It transpires that John had overestimated the capabilities of his men; they’d been competent sailors and fighters twenty years ago, but have grown impatient, lazy, old, and drunk, and none of them take him completely seriously anymore. The pirates have spent years hanging around in his tavern, listening to him telling tall tales and laughing at him flirting with his wife. They know him as Barbeque, and have forgotten who and what he once was. Sure, they still tell stories about Long John Silver, but those are just stories. They no longer flinch at the darkness behind his eyes; they have forgotten to be afraid. Worse, they have forgotten how to trust him to decide what is in their interest. After pushing John to initiate a mutiny earlier than he had planned, they blame him when it goes badly. He’s given the black spot twice and barely talks his way out of being deposed. Most of the men die, and die badly – even Israel Hands manages to get himself killed by a child. It’s not worth dwelling on it.

Things look bad for John for a while, but he’s been in plenty of situations that seemed hopeless and gotten out fine, and that was before he was immortal. There’s just one moment when he nearly gives in to despair, and it comes when he and the surviving mutineers and Jim are hunting for the treasure.

They’ve got the map, after some slightly puzzling negotiation with Doctor Livesey, and have been following the directions on the back, in handwriting John recognized at a glance even after all this time. True to form, Flint hasn’t made anything easy; the mark on the map is just big enough that it’s not especially helpful, and the directions he’s written, which refer to a “tall tree,” are somewhat ambiguous. Still, John remembers the way Flint had started guiding him before forcing their final confrontation, so he thinks they’re going more or less in the right direction.

Although, as he squints at the map, he notices that James has written the date wrong in the little note he included at the bottom recording the transfer of ownership of the map from him to Billy – 1754 rather than 1734 – maybe as part of his scheme to convince people he was a drunk, and so it does occur to John that perhaps none of this is the right information at all. Perhaps James was just fucking with Billy. That would be exactly like him, but it would be a damn nightmare after everything John has had to deal with over the past few days.

Suddenly, one of the men shouts in alarm, alerting them all to a human skeleton. One of the men Flint killed, must be. One of the men John shepherded to their deaths.

John observes that the body is arranged in an unnatural position, as if it’s meant to be a pointer, and sure enough when he has someone compare it against a compass, it guides them in the direction Flint’s note said the cache was.

“If it don’t make me cold inside to think of Flint,” John murmurs, which is true, though he’s less certain of what he says next: “This is one of his jokes, and no mistake. He and these six were alone here; he killed them, every man; and this one he hauled here and laid down by compass.” Logically, it must be true, since who the hell else would have been in this spot and gone to the trouble of setting up this scene to point at a treasure none should know of? But it’s difficult to imagine Flint doing this. He’d been a piece of work, and could be callous, but he did have some respect for the dead. And when would he have had the time?

The others comment uneasily on the fact that there’s nothing on the body, not a knife, or money, or even a tobacco box, and it all seems unnatural.

“If Flint was living,” John says, as if the moment isn’t ominous enough already, “This would be a hot spot for you and me. Six they were, and six are we, and bones is what they are now.”

“I saw him dead with these here deadlights,” says Tom Morgan. “Billy took me in, and there he laid, with penny-pieces on his eyes.”

Well, he’s certainly committed to his story. John wonders what exactly James said to him.

“Dead, aye, sure enough he’s dead and gone below,” interjects one of the others, “But if ever a spirit walked, it would be Flint’s. Dear heart, but he died bad, did Flint!”

Another adds some shit about hearing Flint singing not long before his death, which is bizarre since John is fairly sure Flint never sang and that this man has never been to Savannah. It’s fascinating that legends have such power even over people who should know the truth, making them misremember their own lives. He tries not to think of Flint standing not far from this spot, pleading with him not to let him be distorted.

He sighs and scolds, “Come, come, stow this talk. He’s dead, and he don’t walk, that I know. Leastways, he won’t walk by day, you may lay to that.”

They carry onward, the whole group now subdued, the shadow of death hanging over them.

As they get closer to finding the cache, John starts feeling more confident, and suggests stopping for a midday meal, but Morgan says, “I don’t feel sharp. Thinking of Flint has done me, I think.”

“Well, you praise your stars he’s dead,” John says, a little amused – Tom should be the last person to be anxious about this.

“He were an ugly devil,” shudders one of the others. “That blue in the face, too!”

George Merry nods sagely. “That was how the rum took him. Blue! Well, I reckon he was blue. That’s a true word.”

Absently, John pictures James as he last saw him. An ugly devil. Sure.

They’re interrupted by a haunting voice from the trees, singing an old pirate song once popular among the Walrus crew, the very same song Flint was supposed to have sung.

The effect on the men is immediate and profound. Jim just looks bewildered, but the pirates all go pale and grab at each other, and Merry cries, “It’s Flint!” – the sentiment clearly echoed in the thoughts of the others. Even John, who thinks that’s extraordinarily unlikely, can’t help but feel deeply shaken; it’s a hell of a coincidence.

When the song cuts off, he tries to compose himself, and chokes out, “Come, this won’t do. Stand by to go about. This is a puzzle, and I can’t name the voice, but it’s someone playing tricks – someone flesh and blood.”

He’s hoping that someone will remember that he was once the person who knew Flint better than any other, and take his words as worthy of confidence, but before anyone can relax, the voice returns, this time with a distant wail of “Darby McGraw! Darby McGraw! Darby McGraw! Darby McGraw! Fetch aft the fucking rum, Darby!”

John freezes.

There is a long echoing silence, eventually broken by Dick praying frantically over his torn Bible and some of the others whispering pleas to leave.

“Those were his last words,” Tom Morgan says helpfully.

“Nobody on this island ever heard of Darby,” John mutters, “No one but us…”

And this is the moment – this is when he feels himself spiraling, letting every superstitious doubt he’s been staving off during this trip enter the forefront of his mind one after another.

Flint _did_ die, Morgan’s story be damned, and this is truly his ghost. He would not have thought it possible for ghosts to exist. But is he himself not a sort of ghost? Who is he to say what is possible in matters of life and death and the supernatural?

Flint is not dead, but he is here. This was all a set-up orchestrated by him. Morgan’s story was so carefully delivered, and Billy showed up so close to Bristol, almost like John was meant to find him… Flint made sure John would learn of the map and come to the island. He baited him here – why? – to confront him? to confuse and torment him? to _kill_ him?

John wants to see him. But can he face his hatred?

If he tries to kill him, will he let him? What if it works? What if it doesn’t?

Enough. He cannot think like this. He bangs his crutch against a rock and declares, “I’m here to get that cache, and I’ll not be beaten by man or devil. I never was feared of Flint in his life, and by the powers, I’ll face him dead. There’s seven hundred thousand pounds not a quarter of a mile from here. When did a gentleman of fortune ever turn his back on that much money for a drunk old seaman with a blue face – and him dead too?”

This does not sooth their nerves; they all stare at him in silent horror, except for Merry, who warns him not to cross a spirit.

“Spirit?” John scoffs, “Well maybe, but one thing is unclear to me: there was an echo. Now, no man ever saw a spirit with a shadow; well then, what’s he doing with an echo to him, I should like to know? That’s not in nature, surely?”

Remarkably, this somewhat weak argument actually works. Merry perks up a little and says, “Well, that’s so. You’ve a head upon your shoulders, John, no mistake. About ship, mates! This here crew is on a wrong tack, I do believe. And come to think on it, it was like Flint’s voice, I grant you, but not just so clear-away like it, after all. It was more like somebody else’s voice now – it was more like –”

“Ben Gunn!” cries John, feeling the epiphany crash on him, along with the embarrassment of mistaking Flint’s voice.

Morgan and Merry agree instantly, relief flooding their expressions. Of course there’s the question of why Ben would be here, but he should be a hell of a lot easier to handle than Flint – or Flint’s ghost – so nearly everyone’s moods rapidly improve, and they continue on with their search for the treasure.

Then, naturally, the cache isn’t where it should be, and John finds himself again on the wrong end of his men’s guns. But everything works out when the doctor and Ben fucking Gunn – who was apparently marooned on the island three years earlier, found the treasure, and was behind many of the pirate’s difficulties over the past few days – come to rescue Jim, and John is saved too due to his closeness to the boy.

They meet up with the squire and the captain in a cave, and there in the corner, barely illuminated by the fire, is the treasure, for which so many sacrificed so much.

It is not right that after everything, these are the men who will receive the bulk of what is left. A few well-to-do white Englishmen with respected positions in society. These are the people who have won the prize that was meant to fund a new empire of outcasts?

But of course, some would say that this is entirely John’s own fault. The cache could have been Flint’s, could have been Madi’s; hell, it could have been Jack Rackham’s. It could have funded Nassau, or it could have funded the Maroon Island, or it could have funded a war, and rather than let any of those things happen he chose to leave it in the fucking ground and not care who dug it up.

He sits peacefully in the shadow all evening as the group celebrates. He eats with them; he drinks with them; he laughs at their jokes; he acts as if the past few days, or perhaps the past few decades, never happened, and he is nothing but a friendly sailor.

The next day they set to transporting the treasure to the ship, which takes some time, as the chest it came in was broken long ago. They must locate some bags and boxes, gather together the scattered gems and gold, and then get it into the gigs and out to the ship. During this process, Jim and Ben are cautiously kind to John, though they still fear him to some extent, but the others all merely tolerate him, occasionally speaking roughly to him but mostly just ignoring him.

Finally it is time to depart – and fuck, John is not sorry to say goodbye to this god damn island again. There are only three surviving mutineers – Tom Morgan, Dick Johnson, and a fellow named Johnny Williams – and they desert them on the island, as no one is willing to risk another mutiny; they are merciful enough to leave them with some stores which will help them for a while.

The Hispaniola casts anchor in the nearest port in Spanish America to pick up more hands. Smollett, who is recovering from an injury, stays resting in the cabin, while Livesey, Trelawney, and Jim go ashore for the night, and Abe Gray, the only other surviving crewmember, makes himself scarce.

John and Ben find themselves alone together for the first time, and they stand side by side leaning on the rail of the ship, looking out over the harbor.

“Hell of a turn of events,” John remarks eventually.

Ben shakes his head. “Never would have guessed, when I met your crew in that cage, that this would be how things would end.”

“Well, no, you thought we’d all be tortured or worked to death within weeks.”

“True.” A pause, then Ben asks tentatively, “Are you still with her? Madi?”

“That’s a very good question.”

“She didn’t know you were coming back here?”

He shrugs, and Ben lets out a low whistle. “Well, good luck with that.”

“Yeah.” He watches a gull swooping around and tells him, “Billy’s dead.”

“Thought we already knew that?”

“Survived the fall from the mast, apparently. Made his way off the island somehow, got Flint to mark the location of the cache on the map for him, then drank himself to death last winter.”

“Oh.”

Ben is quiet for a minute, and when John looks over at him, he’s a little surprised to see he doesn’t appear particularly affected. “I wasn’t sure how you’d take it. I know you were friends once.”

“So were you.” John nods, conceding the point, and Ben sighs. “Back at that island, when Rogers fired on us, and his men shot the survivors in the water, Billy was among them. He looked me straight in the eyes. And he made a choice not to kill me, and that means something to me, but I can’t forget that he still kept shooting other men who had been our friends. I know we turned on him first, but I’ve spent a long time thinking about what he helped Rogers do to us, and I can’t wrap my head around it. I won’t mourn him.”

“Fair enough.” They stand in silence for a while longer, and then John says, “You know I’ll be leaving now.”

“They won’t be happy with me if I let you go.”

“Just say you felt that their lives would be in danger if I stayed on board, and you had their interests at heart. They’ll buy it. And if there’s any further problem, just lean into their assumption that the time alone on the island damaged your mind, and they’ll forgive you anything.”

There’s a bit more discussion, but it’s not hard to persuade him, and before long, John is gone, carrying with him one of the sacks of treasure. Compared to the total value of the cache, it’s nothing, but it’s still far from an inconsequential fortune. This will make a positive difference in his and Madi’s life. Now the trial will be convincing her of that.

She’s where he told her to be. When he finds her, she levels him with a glare that makes ice seem warm in comparison, but she’s there.

They only exchange a few words at first, waiting until they are in private. Once John is sure the door of the room Madi has rented at the inn is locked, he pulls out the bag of money and tosses it onto the desk.

Cautiously, he pushes a smile onto his face – this is a good thing, it _is_ – and nods at the bag. “That’ll be worth at least three hundred guineas,” he tells her. “I’d wager closer to four.”

“I specifically told you not to go after that cache,” Madi says, voice dangerously quiet, “And then you did.”

“Yes, but –”

“You directly went against my wishes. You lied to me. You abandoned me. You put yourself and me in danger. And all for what? Four hundred guineas? And now you come back to me grinning as if you have done nothing wrong. How dare you?”

“Now hang on, I did not _abandon_ you. I had every intention of meeting up with you, and I will point out that I did so. And how did I put you in danger? Your safety is everything to me, you know that.”

“You came to Bristol to protect me,” she retorts, “Not to be my husband, but to act as my escort. You knew this, and you understood, or I thought you understood, why such a thing was wise. And then you left me there alone.”

“I –”

“You left me alone in England, and then you condescended to give me instructions to make my way, alone, back across the ocean. I made it here without incident, but there was no guarantee of that. And you say my safety is everything to you?”

He swallows.

She adds, “Even setting aside issues of safety, how do you imagine I felt being forced to uproot myself without notice, potentially damaging connections and plans I had been working on for years?”

“Madi, I am sorry…”

“I do not believe that you are, not really. You are unhappy that I am upset, but I do not believe that you truly feel that you have done wrong. You think that your actions are justified because you managed to recover some of the treasure. It is true that this treasure will be useful going forward. But there are things more important than money.”

“I know that.” He dares to take her hand, but she pulls out of his grasp.

“You betrayed my trust.” She turns away, resting a hand against her stomach as she does when she needs to center herself. “I want you out of my sight.”

“Madi –”

“I came here because I felt that we both deserved closure. A final conversation in which I explain to you that I cannot accept a cycle of betrayal from you. After what you did those years ago, conspiring with Jack Rackham to end the war, removing James Flint from our lives, leaving the cache and all our hopes buried, doing all of it behind my back, you promised me that you would spend your life trying to make up for it, to be a man I could trust again. Now you have gone behind my back once more, made decisions about my future without my consent once more, and I am telling you it is the last time. I tried to move past the hurt, and the mistrust, because I love you. But I will not spend the rest of my life always waiting for you to give me something new to have to forgive you for. I deserve better than that.”

His heart is beating so fast and hard he can practically hear the rush of it in his ears. “So what exactly are you saying?”

“I am saying that we are going to divide the money, we are going to say goodbye, and we are going to leave each other’s lives for good. I am not any happier about it than you are, but it is the right choice. And I hope that for once you will respect my choice.”

It feels like his heart has climbed all the way up into his throat now. “You need to know,” he chokes out, “That everything in me is screaming to fight this. To say, as I said before, that no matter what you tell me, I will not leave you, and will wait as long as it takes for you to accept what I have done. I _could_ do that now – refuse to allow you to end this relationship. I love you. This is a kind of love I never expected to have, and the idea of losing it, especially as a consequence of my own behavior, is sickening. But that is nothing compared to the idea of causing you continued pain. You say that what you need from me is my absence. So I will give you that.”

There are tears in both of their eyes. “Thank you. John, please understand that this is not what I wanted.”

He nods, blinking rapidly to try to clear the tears.

She steps closer, making an aborted motion like she wants to reach for him, before inhaling sharply and turning to the desk where the bag sits.

They split the treasure. It’s not much of a negotiation; as far as he’s concerned Madi can have all of it. She has all her people to consider, and he’s just one wretch who never deserved good things anyway. She is not inclined to argue with a large share, and does take the bulk of it, but although she is angry with him she is not spiteful, so she makes sure he takes enough that he will not want for money for a very long time.

With that task done, they regard each other silently, John halfheartedly praying she’ll change her mind but mostly just trying to memorize her face.

Eventually she wipes her eyes, sighs, and leans in to hug him.

He wraps his arms around her and holds her tight, pressing a kiss to her shoulder when he feels her tightening her fingers in his shirt.

“If you change your mind –”

“I do not think I will,” she returns, voice soft but decisive. “But if that happens, I will find you.”

“I’ll send you letters occasionally,” he whispers into her neck. “You never have to respond, but you’ll have an idea of where I am. Just in case.”

“That is acceptable. But please, when you write to me, do not speak of love, or attempt to win me back. There is no need to make this more difficult than it already is.”

“I’ll try.”

She pulls back slowly, allowing him to rest their foreheads together for a long moment before separating completely. “You should go now.” He nods, but can’t quite make himself move, and she repeats, “Go.”

He goes. Takes his share of the treasure, unlocks the door, and leaves the inn, moving slowly in case she calls after him. She does not. Alone once again, he heads to the docks. He has nowhere to go, but there is nothing for him here.

He boards a ship at random and ends up in Charlestown, because the world is a terrible fucking place with a really annoying sense of irony.

He never saw the actual city when they came before, of course, but clearly they've rebuilt. As he walks idly down the streets, there's no sign at all of Flint's tirade, no remnant of the fires that blazed or the blood that was shed. That day took so much from Flint, from John, from all of them, and symbolized so much, and it's like it never happened.

His nosiness gets the better of him and he wanders around asking questions, trying to determine if by some miracle there's a record of what happened to Miranda Barlow Hamilton's body. He's not sure what he hopes to get out of it – what the fuck is he going to do if he does get an answer? Write James and Thomas a letter? He has no idea where they’re living now, assuming they’re truly still alive. But even if he could find them, surely a letter from him would just be tossed in the fire unopened. And even if their curiosity would make them read it, why should he reopen this particular wound?

Regardless, he doesn't get any answers, though he does get in a fight with someone whose relative was killed by Captain Vane that day. The man really is very angry, angry enough to kill, but of course he doesn't die, just wakes up in an alley with bloodstained clothes and some wounds that should be worse.

It's time to get the hell out.

He wanders. Many years pass, and he rarely spends more than a few months in one place, sometimes because he's bored and sometimes because he's gotten into trouble again.

He goes to Philadelphia, where he observes the Guthrie Trading Company’s legacy and wonders about Nassau. He goes to London and is suffocated by thoughts of both Flint and McGraw. He goes to St. Augustine and rents a house he thinks Flint would have liked, not that they would have ended up living together even if they had run off back then.

He realizes he's a fucking idiot and stops going to places that have meaning.

He gets stupidly severe food poisoning in Florida. He gets in a bar fight in New York. He's caught in a house fire in Rome. He loses Captain Flint the parrot somewhere in Scotland. He fucking drowns again, this time mostly by accident, in Barcelona.

Through all of it, he survives, and he does not age, and he starts to lose track of time.

Eventually he returns to the Bahamas, even though he knows he shouldn't, just because he needs to know, needs to see.

He finds people who knew Madi, and is told that she is dead. Visions of another revolution, another war, flash into his mind, before they tell him, _old age._ It's both better and worse.

She can't have envisioned that for herself. He wants to ask those who were close to her if she seemed to resent it, if she ever mentioned him, if she truly hated him until the end, if she was ever happy. There are no answers he wants to hear.

The people who have given him this news let him stay with them for a few nights, though they have no reason to. He spends each day telling tall tales to the children and each night sobbing into his pillow.

When he leaves the islands this time, he knows he will truly never return, even if he lives as long as the Earth. There is nothing left for him here.

He considers going to Savannah and trying to reconstruct and follow James and Thomas’s path, but he knows the news he'll find, and he doesn't want it. 

It's 1785, or thereabouts. John Silver, though he has not used that name for himself since parting with Madi and will never use it again, is around 95 years old, not that he looks it. Madi Scott is dead, and James and Thomas certainly must be too, and so is Max, and everyone he sailed and fought with or against.

The name Long John Silver is still known, he thinks, but that name, that man, now belongs to myth. John Silver is dead, he told James long ago. And now, now that there is no one left to remember him as he really was rather than as a monster or a hero, it is finally fully true.

The man who used to bear that name, who was killed the moment he put chains on James Flint's wrists and has died dozens of times since, boards yet another ship. Without a name, without a story anyone can know, and without any motivations, he is reborn, and once again he is no one.


	3. Chapter 3

After a few decades of aimless wandering he finds himself in Paris.

He's been to France a few times but never for long, and never to the city. He does know that Parisian society is as guilty of bigotry and imperialism as London. He wept, around the turn of the century, when he heard of Haiti’s successful large-scale slave revolution, casting off French colonial rule and forming a free nation. Years later, he still can’t say with certainty whether his tears were for the proof that such a thing was possible, or for the staggering number of lives sacrificed to make it so. Either way, he knows that it was the French government that was responsible for the greatest wrongs, and Haiti is far from the only place that has been subject to the cruelties that come along with French conquest. Hell, it’s probably been worse since then, considering the Bonaparte situation.

And so he knows that he should not love Paris. But oh, he does, he _does_ , instantly and deeply.

Part of his attachment is unexplainable. There’s just some kind of connection, a sense that he was meant to be here. Perhaps he should be afraid of that; certainly he’s always been wary of his own love in the past, especially when he cannot understand it. But this is a city, not a person. He and Paris do not need each other, cannot harm each other, will not save each other.

There are also more logical reasons he is drawn to the city – things it can offer him. Over the past century, in between fighting with his loved ones and getting himself into dangerous situations, he's become more cultured, easing his boredom with reading and art. Paris with its museums, libraries, coffee house discussions, and studios certainly gives him a chance to explore those pursuits. He's also been drinking a great deal, numbing himself to his losses and the terrifying expanse of eternity that may be lying before him, and France has a never-ending supply of good wine.

He lies his way into an apprenticeship with a skilled painter. When he tires of that – or, more honestly, when his teacher tires of him stealing the fruit he's supposed to be drawing – he takes to wandering the city, familiarizing himself with all its varied establishments.

For the first time in a long time it strikes him that he might stay in one spot for a while, and so he needs an identity. Since shedding John Silver, he has been dozens of people. There are names he will not use because of their associations, but he is left with plenty at his disposal. He has slipped each name on like a jacket, but somehow he feels that this one will need to feel more like skin.

It comes to him on an unassuming summer evening. He's sitting in the Café Musain, a charming little café only a few minutes away from the lodgings he's just rented, and he's spent the past hour alternating between coffee and absinthe and flirting shamelessly with a woman who works as a boot-stitcher down the street. She's utterly unimpressed by him, and he likes her immensely. There's no chance in hell she'll ever sleep with him – she says, flat out, that she finds him impossibly ugly. It's a comment he's been getting on occasion recently, since his eyes have grown sunken from poor sleep, the heavy alcohol use has affected his skin, and he's stopped giving a shit about his hair, but it does strike him as a bit harsh. Still, it comes with an indulgent laugh and she says she would be quite happy to be his friend, and he finds that friendship with her would be agreeable to him as well. Her name is Irma Boissy, she tells him, and then she asks for his name in return.

"R," he says, the letter leaping from his mouth without him having to think about it. R for the red of the woman's skirt, R for his mother's name, R for rubies in a long lost cache, R for refused revolutions. It's not a real name, and he's been enjoying puns lately, so, "Grantaire."

"You don't seem very big," she laughs. He hadn't seemed particularly fitting of the title _Long_ either, and that name certainly caught on, but of course he can't say that, so he just winks and not-so-subtly spreads his legs. Her eyes go wide and he worries for a moment he's gone too far, but then she cackles and hits him on the shoulder with a napkin and says, "Oh, you are _impossible,_ Monsieur Grantaire."

It's a sentiment he gets used to hearing. In his old age he has grown reckless, cynical, and loud, erupting into long philosophical ramblings whenever given a chance, and he's well aware that no one would put up with it if he didn't still have his charm. Grantaire builds relationships all over the city – bartenders, boxers, students, criminals, artists – and all of his friends and contacts alternate between amused and indulgent. They laugh uproariously when he's in the mood for humor, shake their heads bemusedly when he answers well-meaning questions about his background with stories from his past that admittedly sound very fictional, sigh when he dives particularly deep into despair, and, most often, roll their eyes when he acts like a little shit just for the hell of it. 

He finds himself frequenting the Musain often, initially because it's convenient and eventually because he's so fond of the people there.

Some of his favorite afternoons are the ones spent drinking and eating with Joly and Bossuet, who are at the Musain a few nights a week. Bossuet (or Lesgle, or Laigle, or L'Aigle, or Lesgueules, or Legle – the story is a bit muddled) is cheerful and unlucky and bald, and after a few weeks Grantaire is able to stop thinking about Muldoon whenever he's around him, and Joly has even brighter spirits despite often being either ill or anxious. Both of them are unusually tolerant of Grantaire's dramatics, and when he's feeling the weight of living particularly heavily they're good at distracting him into a rant about something slightly less depressing. He suspects, sometimes, that what lies between the two of them is not exactly friendship; Bossuet generally lives with Joly, who only has one bed as far as Grantaire is aware, and there's something about the way they flinch when they touch in public that makes him squint, but of course he can't say anything about it.

Sometimes they are joined by a young man named Bahorel, who is either a law student or the sworn enemy of all lawyers depending on the day, and shares Grantaire's passion for sauntering around the city. He and Grantaire get in the habit of meeting up every other week to practice fencing together. Bahorel has never so much as glanced at the missing leg during these sessions, though he did gasp in their first match, "Where the hell did you learn to fight like that?"

"Learned it from a pirate," he responded, grinning. Bahorel blinked at him, not yet entirely used to the kind of thing Grantaire will say when one is least expecting it, and he took the opportunity to land a point. "Don't just look at my eyes," he said, ignoring a sudden tightness in his throat, "Watch my wrist too."

Grantaire never asks how his three friends knew each other – he’d assumed it was from hanging around the same kinds of places, or possibly through school – but some of the mystery is explained after about a month, when Louison, one of the dishwashing girls, casually asks why he never joins his friends at their meetings.

"What meetings?

"Those students who gather in the back room sometimes," she says. "The ones always looking to stir something up." He stares at her dumbly and she blushes. "Oh, I thought they would have mentioned it to you. I shouldn't have said anything. I think they think it's a secret."

"It's all right, Louison," he assures her. He tells her a weak lie that they told him about it and he was just surprised to hear her bring it up, and she's so relieved to have not broken the group's trust that she forgets about her original question.

The next day he wanders down the hall into the back room.

There are a dozen or so men spread out around a few tables and milling about the room. They're mostly in their twenties – so Louison is right that they're students, though some of them are likely working men – and whatever this meeting is for it doesn't seem to have started yet, because the men are boisterous, laughing and talking all at once and shoving each other about and drinking.

It's exactly Grantaire's kind of party, or at least that's what he thinks until he glances at the tables and sees pamphlets strewn everywhere that look suspiciously like the sort the police have been trying to get off the streets lately, and a map of France under the Republic nailed to the wall that would raise police suspicion all on its own. Looking to stir something up, indeed. Shit, why is he always a magnet for trouble?

He leans against a wall and looks around at the men. There are Joly and Bossuet, talking to a bespectacled man; there's Bahorel laughing with a fan-maker Grantaire has run into on occasion and a younger man in an appallingly ugly jacket; there's a man with a warm smile chatting with six people at once; there's the most beautiful man Grantaire has ever seen.

This last, he almost doesn't notice. He's sitting quietly slightly apart from the others, reading one of the pamphlets and occasionally glancing up at the group. Once Grantaire has seen him, he finds that he cannot look away. Gold hair Grantaire's painting instructor could only dream of capturing, a striking jaw, eyes that could cut through a man's soul. His frame is slight, his face oddly feminine but for its sharpness. He looks awfully young, but underneath the softness of his features there's a severe intensity as if he holds a terrible infinity within him. This man – this boy – is the leader here; he knows this instinctively within a moment of gazing at him. He may as well be carved in marble, like a god, or an allegorical ideal, or the figurehead of a movement, and Grantaire finds himself wanting to kneel at his feet or follow him wherever he may go, or else run far, far away from him.

Only twice in his life has he felt like this – setting his eyes on a person for the first time and being at once drawn in and terrified, recognizing in the space of a heartbeat that this person could be either his salvation or his ruin and he could be the same for them – and he has been trying, desperately, to avoid comparing anything to them. He has been trying to avoid thinking about them at all, though the thousands of empty bottles he's left in his wake show how deeply he's failed at that. Anyway they are on his mind now, and he cannot shake it.

Looking around this room he envisions these young men fighting for their lives, covered in blood and refusing to stand down, falling to the ground, dead, and he feels sick to his stomach. He slinks back towards the door, but at that moment Joly sees him, and after that there is no escaping whatever is happening here.

His friends are surprised but pleased to see him, and delightedly introduce him to their other friends. Combeferre, the man with the glasses, who upon a closer look he's seen before in bookstores examining rather intimidating volumes of philosophy and science. Jean Prouvaire, or Jehan, the poorly dressed, who greets him with a gentle smile and a quote from Dante and beams when he finishes the line. Courfeyrac, the sociable. Feuilly, the fan-maker, who nods at Grantaire in recognition. And Enjolras, the angel, who gives him a charming enough smile when they're introduced and then proceeds to barely look at him.

"You never mentioned this group to me," Grantaire comments to Bossuet and Joly later.

Bossuet looks mildly chagrined but says, "It's rather subversive. We wanted to be sure we could trust you. No offense intended, of course."

"None taken."

"We also weren't sure you would be interested in being involved with this."

"To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what 'this' is," he says. "It seems less than legal, but it also seems like it's just a bunch of friends drinking together, and I'm trying to imagine what I've said that would suggest I would be uninterested in that."

There's a heavy sigh from behind him, and he turns to see Enjolras frowning at him. "That is not what this is about at all."

"No?"

"We are Les Amis de l'ABC." 

_The friends of the abased._ Christ.

"So it's a pun appreciation society?" he says lightly. "Sure, I'll join."

Enjolras smiles briefly, like he's pleased that someone has gotten the joke, but it's quickly replaced with a look that's half frustration and half disdain, and it sends a thrill through him.

“Citizen, we are children of the Republic,” Enjolras decrees. “We honor the greatness of France, we celebrate progress, and we work to usher in a new and beautiful future, marked by light, by love, and by liberty. Imagine, if you will, a world in which there is no conquest, no war, no famine, no poverty, no misery; a world where civilization is governed by science and truth; where the goal of all is the advancement of human unity, equality, fraternity, and peace. Once this future is realized, the human race will be delivered. _That_ , citizen, is the dream, the ideal, driving our organization, _Les Amis de l’ABC._ We wish to see this future for ourselves if we can; but far more importantly, we wish to create it. And so we _will_ , by any means necessary. We are under no misapprehensions: we know this victory will come through fighting and sacrifice. But so it must be, to lead a revolution, and it is a revolution which we are planning, for the purpose of a revolution is to illuminate the human race, and that is precisely our cause – to shine the light of education, freedom, love, and happiness on all people.”

For a moment Grantaire absolutely cannot breathe. As Enjolras has been speaking, describing his – tempting, and undoubtably doomed – revolutionary dreams, he has come alive. He is still as beautiful as the marble sculpture he first perceived him as, but nowhere near as still or cold. He's practically vibrating with restless energy – energy he wants to pour into a battle against the government, by the sounds of it – and he pushes a hand through his hair to push away several curls that have flown into his face. He looks half mad. He looks like he's been lit up like a firework from the inside. He looks like a pirate, only holier.

Flint's name had never seemed quite right. Flint is used to start a fire, after all, and the captain had already been burning for years when they met. Enjolras, though. A stone ready to spark could not be more fitting for him. It's blasphemous to compare them. It's unfair to them both, and unfair to himself when he's been trying to move on, trying to drag himself from the abyss Flint pulled him into. But the comparison must be made.

He stares at Enjolras as if from a great distance, utterly speechless for the first time in years.

"Well?" Enjolras is raising an expectant eyebrow at him.

"Are you asking my opinion?"

"I am."

"My opinion is that you don't have a chance in hell," he says flatly.

He sees Joly recoil and realizes that it's much more blunt than he's been lately. His speeches as John Silver were mostly based in lies but sounded like reality and were meant to convince a coarse bunch of pirates that something was in their best interest. His speeches as Grantaire tend to be more or less based in truth but sound flowery and are meant to convince Parisians that he's just another over-dramatic disillusioned academic. He clears his throat.

“‘Look at the past – empire succeeding empire – and from that, extrapolate the future: the same thing. No escape from the rhythm of events.’ That’s Marcus Aurelius. _Meditations_.”

“You are a Stoic?”

“Me? Certainly not, far too much focus on introspection for me, but even the worst of philosophies is bound to occasionally make excellent points, just as a broken clock is correct twice daily. The point of the quote: the world goes on as it has been, no matter how fiercely any of us may wish otherwise. Revolution in ’89 removes one form of tyranny, but leads to a reign of terror, and not long after that, we see the rule of an emperor. Now here we are with a king once more. That revolution was a significant historical moment, a victory in many ways, and yet how different is the world now that it is done? How many of the ideals its martyrs preached have actually been adopted? You paint a lovely picture, _Citizen_ , of your better world, but such a dream is destined to remain precisely that: a dream, which may never enter the realms of reality. Why? In part, because your aims are vague. You speak of ideals; but how are such things realized? You wish to ‘create’ this future – fine, but how? But perhaps you do have specific plans, which you will tell me if I agree to listen to you. Very well. Still, I am confident that regardless of how nebulous or clear your plans may be, this dream will not come true. Why? Because of everyone else. I see quite clearly how earnest _you_ are, and I am sure that every man in this room feels just as strongly. But how can twenty men change society, particularly in such a fundamental way as you have just described? The king, the army, the police will silence you the moment you take these ideas to the streets, and even if you can find an audience before that happens, the average citizen does not care about ideals or revolution; he cares about his next meal. You will not move him.”

There's a silence. Most of the group has been listening to them, apparently, and they glance warily between them. Enjolras looks stricken, and Grantaire refuses to look away.

"Do you not believe in anything?" Enjolras asks finally.

"In general, no. I believe only that what you are trying to accomplish, while admirable, is not compatible with survival. You did, after all, speak of fighting, of sacrifice."

"I am not satisfied with mere survival. The people are surviving now, mostly. Fearing the government, existing in a state of ignorance, huddling on cold street corners, begging for bread, that is survival. All people deserve more than that, they deserve to _live,_ to flourish. That is what we fight for."

"You wish to achieve this Utopia by throwing yourself in front of a gun," Grantaire snaps. "Forgive me if I find that foolish."

"Oh, so not only do you think the cause is without hope, you think me foolish."

"I think you naïve," he says. "I think that as deeply as you care about humanity, you do not understand human nature. I think you underestimate the power of the law and the military, and you overestimate the willingness of common people to rise up."

Enjolras regards him with burning eyes and a clenched jaw. "Why are you here, then?"

Because he was curious, he could say. Because he knew his friends were here. Because he had nothing better to do. But truthfully, even though those may have been his reasons for entering the room, his reasons for staying shifted as soon as he laid eyes on this tragic beauty. Now instead of curiosity, it's the kind of dangerous compulsion that leads to stealing a warship or giving up a share of five million dollars.

He's here, he could tell Enjolras but absolutely never will, because he feels attached, and entranced, and trapped, and he could not make himself leave if his life depended on it. He was born, it seems, to always be a satellite fixed to some greater being or other, but he has been without gravity for too long. Now he has found his planet once again, and he will remain in orbit here until one of them dies.

He does not answer. Instead he moves over to one of the tables and takes a seat.

"What are you doing?" demands Enjolras.

Raising an eyebrow, he answers, "What does it look like? I'm sitting down."

"Why?"

"Well, you see, you've probably noticed that I've only got one leg, so standing around for too long can get uncomfortable."

Enjolras takes a deep breath. "But why are you staying at all? I know you have friends here, but you can spend time together any time you like. This is not just a social organization. This is a meeting to discuss important issues, and if you are only going to make a mockery of it, I would have you leave."

Grantaire leans back in the chair and takes a sip from someone else's drink. "If everyone banned me from their establishments for making a mockery of important topics, I would have nowhere to go at all."

"That is not my concern. The fact remains that you are clearly nothing but a drunken skeptic who cares only for making jokes and sitting around with a bottle, and as this is a space to discuss ideals and action, there is no place for you here."

It's harsh. By the looks the others exchange, perhaps uncharacteristically so. It's also not entirely untrue, but it stings a bit. 

But he has been dealt much worse blows, and there's no chance he's leaving now.

He thinks of a crew coming to love him after he told them their own secrets and let them punch him. He thinks of Flint pressing a knife against his throat and then coming to trust him enough to teach him how to kill him. He thinks of Nassau learning to respect him once he lost a limb. He thinks of people on the streets of his adolescence letting him live because they liked how he didn’t fight back against how they wanted to treat him. He thinks of Irma deciding he was worth knowing when he didn't make a fuss about her insulting him.

If squaring his shoulders and absorbing abuse is what it takes to get people on his side, he will do it. Enjolras scowls down at him, and he looks up into those clear blue eyes and smiles.

"Start your meeting," he says. "Let's give each other a chance to prove each other wrong, shall we?"

They stare each other down for several long moments. Eventually Enjolras closes his eyes and says tiredly, "Let us begin."

After the meeting, Joly and Bossuet drag Grantaire away before he and Enjolras can speak again, and walk back to his apartment with him.

"Well," says Joly. "That was interesting."

"Yes," Grantaire agrees, thinking of the way the light of the setting sun through the window danced on Enjolras's hair.

Bossuet pokes his shoulder. "Please say you aren't going to go back."

"Laigle, my friend, you know me well enough that you must know I am."

They exchange a glance and Joly asks, "Will you at least try to avoid antagonizing Enjolras? I realize he was a bit cruel to you as well, but it's true that it's unhelpful for you to just blindly criticize everything."

"Not blindly," he says. "My eyes have been wide open for longer than you can imagine, and I have seen the world as it is. If you saw the same, you _Amis_ would be disappointed with what you would find. You stare into the soul of the universe looking for light, and you will be met with an abyss, and it may not be a kind one. I can see it, even if he is blind as of yet."

"No doubt," says Bossuet, who has developed a remarkable talent for acting like he understands what Grantaire is talking about most of the time, "But I did get the sense that whether you believed what you were saying or not, your reason for actually saying it was mostly just to get attention, and knowing Enjolras I feel you would meet a better reception if you didn't insult him."

Even if that were true – which he doubts somewhat, since Enjolras barely registered his existence until he opened his mouth – it seems as though it would be a bit too late now. Nevertheless, he grins and promises that he will try to exhibit some degree of restraint, and he even sort of means it.

The next few meetings are somewhat less explosive. Grantaire arrives early, makes himself comfortable in the corner of the room, lifts his drink in a silent toast when Enjolras enters with Combeferre, and smirks when something like despair crosses Enjolras's face upon seeing him back. Otherwise he does mostly behave himself, quietly observing the group from the corner, only occasionally shaking his head derisively, and ignoring the way Enjolras glares at him whenever he does so.

Enjolras, for his part, is actually also rather quiet. Before the meeting officially commences and after it concludes, when everyone is just milling about chatting, he mostly remains off to the side. While most of the group drinks and jokes around, Enjolras just watches them with some degree of fondness, patiently waiting for them to get their gossip out of their systems so they can get down to the revolutionary talk. Sometimes he speaks softly with Combeferre or Courfeyrac or Feuilly, and on occasion a gentle smile even breaks through his serious countenance. (The first time Grantaire hears him laugh he feels like his heart is about to burst out of his chest like a thief flailing off the side of a ship.) Mostly, though, he leaves the socializing to everyone else.

Sitting on a rooftop with Jean Prouvaire one afternoon Grantaire idly comments on Enjolras's unexpected shyness, and Jehan nods and says that Enjolras is so focused on the cause that he seems to forget how to be a person sometimes. "He's incredibly loving, don't be mistaken," he says. "He cares so much about the people of France it must hurt him, and he does care about us as well, but he's a bit intense, and small talk is far from being his strongest skill." 

Even during the meetings themselves, Enjolras talks less than Grantaire might have expected. He is undoubtedly the unofficial leader of the group, as was R's first impression, but Combeferre generally guides the discussions, and everyone has an equal chance to talk. Enjolras sometimes gets passionate about something and goes on a brief rant, and the others tend to look to him for final decisions, but often he seems perfectly content to listen.

Well, fine. Grantaire can listen, too.

Truthfully, he would probably find himself hanging around these meetings even if he wasn't so obsessed with Enjolras. They're going to get themselves killed, of course, but otherwise he likes them all tremendously, and he befriends them easily. Jehan and Feuilly make a game of rattling off quotes, or book titles, or things to find in Paris, and making him list off facts about them – what book a quote is from, who wrote the book, what store is best for something and where the store is located and what the owner's name is, and so on. They find it endlessly fascinating how much he knows, and they always laugh when he shrugs and says, with a twinge of irony they'll never understand, "I have a long fucking memory." He discusses philosophy with Combeferre and history with Courfeyrac, and he continues his regular fencing practice with Bahorel and drinks with Joly and Bossuet. 

They've all got such big hearts, which they open wide even to him, that sometimes he can barely breathe around them. He's used to being alone, he's used to living with a woman who resented him, he's used to the violence associated with spending all one's time with pirates, he's used to – to everything before that. Never in his extended life has he known real tenderness, at least not for long. Yet of the eight main members of Les Amis, seven of them offer him more kindness than he knows what to do with, even when he's a shit, and sometimes it's too much and he goes home at night and sobs, and he wants to scream at them that he doesn't fucking deserve it, but he's a selfish man and he wouldn't give it up for the world.

He finds a wine shop restaurant called the Corinthe, which attracts him with a sign that's been worn so it says _Carpe Horas._ He loves it immediately, not for its wine – which is not good – or its food – which is passable – but for its looks and its staff, who are considered just as loud and ugly as he is. He brings Les Amis in and they adopt it as their own just as they claimed the Musain before he knew them; from then on they split their time between the two places. They still mostly use the Musain for more political talk, and the Corinthe becomes a place for them to socialize. Enjolras seems to appreciate this, since having designated social gatherings both strengthens the bonds between the group and slightly reduces the talking before more official meetings, and it’s a bonus that the Corinthe is more convenient for the working men associated with Les Amis so some of them meet up with them more often than they had been, and for a few weeks he's much warmer toward Grantaire. After that they go back to getting under each other's skin, of course, but it's nice while it lasts.

Over the following months, as Grantaire inserts himself into the group and they settle into a rhythm, this is how the meetings tend to go: Enjolras watches his friends, and occasionally shares his own thoughts; Grantaire watches Enjolras, and occasionally shares enigmatic warnings about the futility of it all; Enjolras tells him to fuck off (though not quite in those words); the others sigh at them both; the inevitable battle slowly creeps nearer.

One evening, when the Amis have exhausted their usual revolutionary topics of discussion and fallen back to slightly drunken gaiety, Feuilly and Courfeyrac start a spirited conversation about foreign affairs, especially those of Greece.

“That reminds me,” Grantaire cuts in, “Of something I once saw while travelling with a friend of mine, an Englishman by the name of… Solomon Little.”

He casts his voice in just the way he knows commands attention – over-dramatic enough to make men expect entertainment but not so much that they think it’s fiction, friendly enough to make them feel like they’re part of a conversation but not enough to let them question him, loud enough to be heard but quiet enough to be taken seriously. As expected, most of his friends turn to him immediately, curious about what else he might say.

“You see,” he continues, “Solomon had met a beautiful young Greek woman, and decided to seek out books about the country and culture, in hopes of impressing her…”

He launches into an elaborate tale of people in the wrong places at the wrong times, well-intentioned cultural miscommunications, mistaken identities, and thwarted love. They eat the story up like he knew they would, all wide eyes and grins and laughter and gasps in all the right places.

He basks in being the center of attention until he tires of it, and then he slinks off to the side of the room, sinking into a chair next to Enjolras, who has been silently observing the proceedings like usual.

They nod acknowledgement at each other. After a few moments of quiet, Enjolras, voice level, comments, “That was a good story.”

“Why, thank you, Chief. I wouldn’t have thought you the type to appreciate something so frivolous as a story.”

“It’s a shame,” Enjolras continues, not dignifying that with a reply, “That most of it was untrue, was it not?”

Grantaire raises an eyebrow at him. He’s right, of course – that story was as full of bullshit as a farm – but there have been very few people who have ever been able to see through his deceptions and deflections quite so effortlessly.

“Does it matter?”

“How do you mean?”

He shrugs. “We’re all having fun here. Well, perhaps not you; it’s sometimes hard to tell how much you’re enjoying yourself. But the rest of us – them? I told them a story. They enjoyed it. Look around, you can see that they’re in a good mood now that the telling is over. What difference does it make if the story was fiction or memory?”

Enjolras frowns. He’s always frowning, around Grantaire. It’s unfortunate, but maybe for the best, considering how much his smiles render Grantaire breathless. “I suppose it wouldn’t matter,” he concedes, “If you simply presented it as a story. But you told them it was something that really happened. Why lie?”

It’s far from the worst lie he’s told, though saying as much would hardly help his case.

“You’re right,” he admits, “That much of it was less than faithful to reality.” He sees Enjolras blink, probably surprised by Grantaire acknowledging him being right about anything at all, and quickly adds, “Much of it, however, stems directly from actual events.”

“Why not just tell what actually happened, then, without embellishments or omissions or whatever other alterations?”

“Because what actually happened was riddled with suffering, and I felt no need to give voice to that,” he snaps, and Enjolras rears back, stricken. “This world is full of misery, Enjolras. I don’t know what kind of history you have imagined for me, if any, but you cannot believe, after everything I have ever said to you, that I’ve somehow escaped that. There are things I would rather not remember. Even the best times are stained by spots of very bad. So yes, if I wish to entertain our friends with stories from my past, I will embellish. I will omit. I will make alterations. I don’t think of it as lying so much as reimagining, or re-remembering. Piecing truths together, creating a new truth that I like better.”

“That is… not how truth works, I think,” Enjolras says slowly. “Still, I suppose there is no real harm.”

There’s something too close to pity on his face. Of course. What does he know about suffering? To him, suffering is something he sees in other people. He is willing, even eager, to risk his life if it might help put an end to other people’s torment, but he himself has never known true pain, will likely never know it until his last day. He’ll never truly understand it, will always overcompensate in his response to it. Too earnest about trying to change the societal roots of the problem to actually listen to an individual, or too sympathetic, not realizing that sometimes gentleness has its own sting. Grantaire looks away.

“Who was Solomon Little?” asks Enjolras softly, after Grantaire has been quiet for longer than usual. With his accent, he stumbles over the name a bit, but Grantaire is too uncomfortable to find the effort amusing or flattering or anything else.

“A name I have invoked in many tales,” he answers. His voice sounds gravelly to his own ears. Not even Flint poked at that particular hole in his stories, that particular bruise. “Who that name stands in to represent varies. I did truly know a boy by that name, once, a very long time ago. Sometimes it’s actually him. Sometimes it’s someone else I’ve lost. Sometimes it’s me. Depends on the story, and my mood.”

He waits for Enjolras to prod further. To ask who he was in the story he’s just told, or to ask why he invokes that name, or why he doesn’t use real names. He won’t answer those questions – he’s already bared more of himself here than he generally likes – but he expects them.

Enjolras does not ask any of those questions. Instead, realization seeming to dawn on him, he murmurs, “You’re keeping them alive. Solomon Little, and the other people you’ve lost, and the other versions of yourself. You’re using his name, and telling their stories, and changing the endings, all in an attempt to keep them alive and happy in your memory.”

Grantaire drains his cup of wine. “Something like that,” he says hoarsely.

“I am sorry for whatever loss and suffering you and your loved ones have endured,” Enjolras tells him with unusual sensitivity, immediately ruining it by adding, “Though your experience should drive you to work to build a better world.”

“Your belief in your ability to make a difference never ceases to charm me.”

“I am certain that we can do it. Have you truly never felt that kind of certainty in something?”

For a while, growing up, he had been certain that things could not get any worse. Then he was proved wrong a dozen times and became certain that it could always be worse. Then in Nassau he was briefly seduced into something like certainty that change was possible. God, what would Enjolras have made of that John Silver, the one who was willing to fight for something larger than himself, willing to try to make things better? What could they have done together?

He stands. “There is but one certainty, my full glass, and it looks like I need another, if you’ll excuse me.”

Enjolras’s face shutters with disappointment, as if he’d actually let himself think they were getting somewhere for once. “You should not drink so much.”

“We’re not all Puritans, Enjolras.”

“I am not a Puritan,” he retorts, back to pure exasperation. “I simply feel that I am better able to focus on what is truly important when I have a clear mind. Perhaps you would find similar results if you tried –”

Grantaire shakes his head, cuts him off: “My head is clear.”

He remembers saying something similar to Billy Bones, a very long time ago, back when they were becalmed. He remembers, distantly, feeling the same conviction in the truth of his own statement as he said it, and the same desire to laugh at himself as soon as the words were out. Hunger, dehydration, Flint, wine, Enjolras; they all have the same ability to cast a haze over some parts of his mind, even as they illuminate others. He can’t quite recall whether Billy responded to his bullshit with the same look of exhausted incredulity that Enjolras has on his face now. Probably.

God, he hasn’t thought about Billy in years. He really does need another drink, now.

“In fact,” he says, “I would like my head to be less clear. Once again, I will ask you to excuse me, unless of course I can tempt you to join me.”

“Join you in drinking astonishing quantities of wine.”

“Just so.”

Enjolras sighs heavily. “No thank you.”

“Suit yourself,” he says, and then he stumbles off to spend the rest of the evening drinking until all these thoughts of the past return to the oblivion where they belong.

At another meeting some time later, Grantaire, drunk as usual and in a dreadful mood, finds himself shouting rants at the top of his lungs, caring little for the fact that no one in the room is paying much attention to him.

Such behavior, to his mild shame, is really not unusual for him anymore, but this particular speech is especially despondent even for him, because he’s had a strange and terrible week which began with running into a man who reminded him of a relative he would rather not think about and ended with a mugging that might have killed someone else.

“I want a drink,” he cries, although he has two and a half empty glasses already sitting in front of him. “I desire to forget life. Life is a hideous invention of I know not whom. It lasts no time at all, and is worth nothing. One breaks one’s neck in living.”

A beat, in which he considers being affronted that none of his friends, these men who claim to care for him, seem remotely concerned about this statement. Ah, well. Perhaps he has trained them not to take anything he says seriously. And in their defense, everyone in the room is talking all at once in all directions; he may be loudest but is surely far from most interesting.

Undeterred, he launches into a meandering and sometimes contradictory speech touching on the subjects of happiness, vanity, human value and virtue, his own capacity to disappoint others, the repetitive nature of history, conquest and empires, the shortcomings of England, and finally the shortcomings and riches of various other places. He is finally distracted by Louison passing by just as he expresses a desire for a naked Cleopatra rolled in Persian carpets; he reaches for her, and Bossuet, sighing and trying to hush him, reaches out to him in turn as if to pull his hands away.

“Aigle de Meaux, down with your paws,” Grantaire slurs, “You produce on me no effect with your gesture of Hippocrates refusing Artaxerxes’ bric-a-brac. I excuse you from the task of soothing me. Moreover, I am sad. What do you wish me to say to you? Man is evil, man is deformed; the butterfly is a success, man is a failure. God made a mistake with that animal. A crowd offers a choice of ugliness. The first comer is a wretch, Femme — woman — rhymes with infame — infamous. Yes, I have the spleen, complicated with melancholy, with homesickness, plus hypochondria, and I am vexed and I rage, and I yawn, and I am bored, and I am tired to death, and I am stupid! Let God go to the devil!”

All more or less true, though there is that one word that sticks out, to himself if not to anyone else: homesickness. As if he has ever had a home to miss. Perhaps what is making him sick is that lack, the gaping emptiness, the longing for something that doesn’t exist.

“Silence then, capital R!” Bossuet snaps, apparently at the end of his patience for him. Grantaire sits back, stung, as his friend turns back to his conversation, something about legal studies.

If even Bossuet is tired of him, he’s probably really pushing his luck with the rest of the group, so he falls mostly quiet, listening to fragments of discussion from around the room. Here two of the men are writing a vaudeville of some sort; here two others are discussing a duel; here Prouvaire is debating mythology with someone surely out of his depth; here Bahorel is advising Joly on how to win over a woman named Musichetta with whom he is enamored (Bahorel suggests buying a nice pair of trousers – Grantaire has been cultivating a reputation as someone who cares about being desired by women, so he calls out to inquire into the price for the recommended article of clothing); here Courfeyrac is burning a copy of the Touquet Charter while Combeferre watches.

All in all, the room seems quite merry, if chaotic, now that Grantaire has shut up about his desolation.

The evening takes a sharp turn when someone – Bossuet, he thinks – mentions the date Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated at Waterloo. This subject is not controversial in this group on its own; the emperor and his downfall are popular symbols in their discussions.

What makes this moment different is Courfeyrac’s friend Marius Pontmercy. He’s a newcomer to their meetings, and has stayed off to the sidelines of debates for the most part until now, watching their uproarious behavior with wide eyes. But something about their casual mentioning and denigrating of Bonaparte has agitated him, and he goes over to point at Corsica on the map on the wall and declare it “a little island which has rendered France very great.”

The effect on the group is astonishing. Complete stillness. All eyes on either Pontmercy or Enjolras. A moment of dead silence.

“France needs no Corsica to be great,” Enjolras says in the wake of that frozen silence. He’s staring into some distant space in such a way that could almost suggest that he is barely paying attention, if his voice was not so firm. “France is great because she is France. Quia nomina leo.”

A slightly puzzling choice of Latin in R’s opinion, but he says it with such confidence that the others nod along in agreement. Pontmercy, though, is only made more energized. “God forbid that I should diminish France!” he cries, “But amalgamating Napoleon with her is not diminishing her. Come! let us argue the question.”

Grantaire is struck by the conviction that it’s not going to end up being much of an argument, and he snags a bottle of wine to carry him through Pontmercy proceeding to extoll Napoleon’s greatness, praising his writings, his wars, his similarities to men like Caesar, his conquering of the world.

It’s an incredible speech, really. Grantaire is tempted to take notes, so he can borrow some of the worst points if he’s ever in the mood to irritate Enjolras more than usual.

The rest of the men are still speechless; perhaps they are dumbstruck, perhaps they are touched by his passion, perhaps they are embarrassed on his behalf, perhaps they just want to let him get this out of his system before they cut him down. Pontmercy seems utterly oblivious to any such thoughts, and if anything appears emboldened by the silence, working himself up to increasingly dramatic – and breathless – language.

He finally concludes, in reference to dazzling conquest, “What greater thing is there?"

"To be free," says Combeferre.

It’s a simple rebuke, but an effective one. Pontmercy has no response, bowing his head and not showing any sign of noticing when Combeferre nods decisively and leaves the room, or when the others start following after him.

Grantaire almost wishes to wait around to see Pontmercy’s reaction when he shakes off his fog and realizes the room has emptied, especially since Enjolras alone is unmoving and R would like to see what he intends to say to him, but in the end he walks out after his friends.

On the stairs, Combeferre breaks into song: “ _If Caesar had given me glory and war, and I were obliged to quit my mother's love, I would say to great Caesar, ‘Take back thy sceptre and thy chariot; I prefer the love of my mother.’”_

Some of the core members of the group pause outside.

“I had no idea he was a Bonapartist,” Bossuet says eventually.

“Nor did I,” Courfeyrac sighs. “I anticipate a very awkward conversation with him in my future.”

The door of the Musain opens, and they all glance back to see Pontmercy walk out as if in a daze, followed moments later by a characteristically stone-faced Enjolras. Marius sees them, goes red, and hurries in the opposite direction, but Enjolras walks over to join them.

“What happened?” asks Combeferre.

“I thought for a moment that he was preparing to resume arguing with me, but then we heard you singing. He echoed, ‘my mother?’”

“And you said?”

“I said, ‘Citizen, my mother is the Republic.’”

Combeferre smiles approvingly, and not one of the friends laughs in their faces. Grantaire does not exhibit such restraint, and Enjolras glares at him.

“Why are you still here?”

“The novelty of not being the person with whom you are most aggrieved is something I wished to cherish.”

“You would be able to experience it more if you did not trivialize everything I say.”

“Don’t be ridiculous; I only trivialize _most_ of what you say.”

Enjolras rolls his eyes, says, “Good night, Grantaire,” and departs with Combeferre.

Bossuet elbows R and tells him, “Well, I am glad your mood appears to have improved, even if it is at the expense of our friends.”

“At their expense? No. I may not take such lofty statements seriously, but I mean no malice. Enjolras knows that. He would go to greater efforts to keep me away if he didn’t.”

“That’s true,” remarks Courfeyrac, who is one of Enjolras’s dearest friends and should know what he’s talking about. He assures Bossuet, “He knows what to expect from Grantaire. He is not going to be left feeling hurt after the exchanges of this evening. Marius will be, but R can hardly be considered at fault for that.” He claps an affable hand on Grantaire’s shoulder and declares, “Speaking of poor Marius, I ought to follow him and ease his despondency. Good evening, gentlemen.”

Despite whatever friendly assurances Courfeyrac gives him, Marius Pontmercy stops coming to the Café Musain after that.

But Grantaire stays, even as more time passes until it’s the longest he’s been in one place since leaving Bristol.

Revolution rises in 1830 and comes to an end after only a few days; by the time it’s over, Paris has impressively managed to replace one monarchy with another. Les Amis de l’ABC are somehow only tangentially involved with the whole ordeal, though many of their connections are active enough to report casualties.

Grantaire, for his part, spends most of the rebellion getting spectacularly drunk in his own quarters. He doesn’t even hear the results until a few days later, when he runs into Jehan at the library. Later, of course, when he returns to meetings like a moth to flame, he hears about it in great detail, and has extensive arguments about whether or not it counts as a success and accordingly whether it’s proved him right or wrong about the feasibility of the People forcing social change.

Regardless of Grantaire’s opinions, Enjolras and the others have no intention of giving up their crusade, and their ideas are spreading – similar little secret revolutionary societies quietly spring up all around the city.

The 1830 rebellion may have been quickly arrested, the men say, but that fire could never be extinguished fully, and still simmers. Even the police, they insist, can feel the heat, the potential for reignition. Just look at the increased intensity of their investigations – they’re nervous.

R is nervous, too, about the giddy hopefulness in his friends that could easily become recklessness, and about the fact that the increased police presence means increased danger for the group.

Every part of him wants to do what he did for Flint and drag them away from the danger. But this time, there is no leverage he can use, no truest love to return them to, because Enjolras's truest love is France, and the others will go where he follows.

And anyway, he knows better than anyone just how much someone who has been spared death can come to resent being alive.

Overwhelmed by their unrelenting belief one night, he slips away from the group to stand on a small balcony off the upper room of the Corinthe.

“Staring into the dark abyss of the night sky and musing on its symbolism of the never-ending hopelessness of society, humanity, and life?”

Grantaire jerks around to see Enjolras, who has stepped up beside him and raises an eyebrow as he leans against the railing.

“That does sound like me,” he says lightly, returning his gaze to the sky. “To the contrary, though; I’m looking at the stars.”

“Oh?”

“For all of human history, people have been staring up at the heavens, hoping for answers. Religions have tracked meaning across constellations. Sailors navigate by them. The masses glance up as if pinpricks of light can serve as beacons of hope. For some, perhaps that even has some effect. The stars do have a certain beauty to which even I have been drawn, and I do not doubt that there are people for whom knowing that such beauty exists in the world can bring some degree of comfort, even if it does not actually change anything.”

Enjolras sighs. “A moment of comfort or hope can have a more profound impact than you think.”

“A child starving on the street who looks up at the stars and smiles at their light just before falling asleep will still be starving in the morning.”

“So no one should ever seek out any happiness in their life, just because it will not feed them? I cannot believe that, Grantaire, and I cannot believe that you think it either. You are constantly joking with your friends, or engaging with art, or playing games – all things that must give you some measure of joy.”

“This is surprising coming from you, when you spare no time for enjoyments and pay no attention to anything but the Republic.”

“I have devoted my life to improving life for others. My personal unwillingness to lose focus does not mean I am ignorant to the concept of entertainment, nor that I object to some people pursuing it. In fact, I hope to protect their right and ability to do so. You talk about all the misery in the world – what can we do but fight to counteract it?”

There’s something flying around in the distance, silhouette barely visible, either a bird out late or a bat. Grantaire watches it in silence until it disappears, knowing that it is probably frustrating Enjolras that he is failing to immediately respond.

“The stars will all burn out one day, but the dark will always be there,” he says finally. “It seems to me that we should put less effort into striving for light we may never reach, or may obtain but can never keep, and spend more time learning to live with the darkness we already have.” He turns to face Enjolras. “Someone I knew a very long time ago told me once that in the dark there can be discovery, and freedom. He told me a great many things which I did not pay much attention to at the time, but that part of it has stuck with me. The people who decide what is right and wrong say that we should pursue the light and fear the dark, but my friend was correct, I think, in insisting that there are things worth exploring in darkness.”

Enjolras shifts. Their shoulders brush, which can’t have been his intention, but Grantaire does not lean away. “There may be merit in that,” acknowledges Enjolras, “But while a star may burn out, it is always replaced by another.”

“Then what is the point?” Grantaire demands. “If it’s just an endless, unchanging cycle of setting yourself on fire only to disappear, what is the point of burning at all?”

“The point is that there is a starving child on the street whose life may be better for one moment. The point is that someone cared enough to make that happen. The point is that the wonderful things within the darkness cannot be discovered until someone illuminates them.”

He can’t stop remembering argument after argument with Madi.

“We could have won,” she would insist. They had won the battle against the Navy on her people’s island, they had taken plantations, Flint had laid waste to so many cities, they had recruited so many slaves, they were only gaining momentum – they could have won the war if only Silver had allowed it to happen.

And maybe that was true. Certainly they had won in all the ways she described. Maybe that could have translated to a larger victory. Or maybe not. But, as he told her again and again, even if their side won the war, he did not believe that they could have survived it. Flint, Madi, maybe John himself – they would not have all made it out. Madi could reconcile herself with that risk, that sacrifice. John Silver could not. Grantaire cannot.

But what plagues him now is that whenever he and Madi went through the script of their fights, the undercurrent was always that sense that there had been a possibility that they could have pulled off their revolution. But they had had hundreds of men, thousands of guns, cannons, a commander with many years of experience with battle. Les Amis have, maybe, a few dozen men, who are still working to collect weapons and have for the most part never used them.

Not only will Grantaire’s friends not survive this, none of them will. They’ll be fucking slaughtered, and their cause will go down in flames.

“I believe that we can win.”

“You must be able to recognize that the National Guard is a foe that outmatches you in every possible way.”

“It will be a challenge,” Enjolras acknowledges, “But we will bring the people to our side and with them we will push our way to triumph.”

“I hope,” Grantaire says wearily, “That you are somehow right.”

“If we work for it, a better day _will_ dawn.”

“And if that happens, will you be alive to see it?”

It’s not all terrible all the time, of course. Well, the plan for revolution is. But not Grantaire’s life, in general, to whatever extent he still has a life separate from Enjolras and to whatever extent he can ignore the fact that they really do live in an oppressive society.

He sleeps a lot, a luxury he never had growing up. He reads some excellent books. He accidentally helps Bossuet seduce Musichetta, the same woman Joly has started seeing. (It’s a complicated mess that could really only ever happen to the ever unlucky Bossuet, but fortunately for everyone involved it somehow gets resolved in some sort of ménage a trois situation that they all seem quite happy about, so no one resents R for his part in it, and he resolutely does not think about the other people he has known who had this sort of relationship.) He sees some spectacular sunsets. He goes out with his friends often.

In September of 1831, he, Bossuet, and Courfeyrac attend a ball at Sceaux, and persuade Marius Pontmercy to come along with them; he has apparently developed an infatuation with a girl and has no idea who she is or where she might be found, and only let himself be dragged away from his moping with the hopes that she may be at the ball. Grantaire would criticize Marius for what sounds like a very unhealthy obsession, if it wouldn’t be massively hypocritical of him.

They do not, in fact, find the girl, despite Grantaire’s absent-mindedly enigmatic assurance that this is the place where all lost women are found, but it’s a nice night otherwise. There’s good food, good drink, good music, and – for those of them with two legs – good dancing. Grantaire enjoys himself about as much as he ever enjoys himself these days, Courfeyrac and Bossuet have a tremendous amount of fun, and even Pontmercy is distracted into a few smiles, though he ends up leaving early on his own looking rather sad.

At one point Grantaire wanders away from the others and falls into conversation with a lovely young woman named Constance Blanchet. As he kisses her hand he announces, “You should more rightly be called Floréal, for you are as beautiful as the spring.”

She giggles, though the friends she’s with look a bit miffed. He supposes he could assign each of them their own Republican months as well, but honestly he only has so much energy for flirtation.

“I would ask you to grant me a dance,” he says, “But I suspect it would be a less than satisfactory experience for us both.”

“I’m not much for dancing anyway,” she tells him graciously, glancing at his leg for only a moment.

“How fortuitous. I hope my company is an acceptable substitute.”

She nods, and they find a bench to sit and talk and stay there for most of the rest of the evening, her friends hovering nearby and his occasionally pausing to smile at them.

He’s not quite sure why he’s doing this. She’s attractive, yes, but so are many of the other girls in this hall, and for that matter so are most of his friends; there _is_ something inexplicably spring-like about her, but other than that she’s not all that special. And he liked her instantly, but he can’t see himself falling in love with her, not in the way he’s always experienced love, all-consuming and ruinous.

It would make sense for him to pay her such attention if he was hoping to fuck her. But for all the tales of debauchery he brags about to any man who will listen, he actually hasn’t fucked anyone in decades, and he’s not sure he wants to.

Most people, upon discovering they were immortal, would probably fill that endless time with endless sexual experiences. He’d thought about it, considered whether it would help fill the void left by Madi. He even gave it a few tries. Not long after their final separation, he stumbled into an especially seedy brothel and paid more than he should have for a threesome, a woman and a man. He’d let the man fuck him hard and rough as he buried his face between the woman’s legs and screwed his eyes shut the whole time so he couldn’t see what they didn’t look like. It hadn’t been bad sex – and he has had truly unspeakably terrible sex, so he knows what he’s talking about – but it left him feeling empty and raw and untrue, and it took him many years to try again. Then it was just three individual women, spread over time and continents, each one unsatisfying for reasons he couldn’t pin down. He’s mostly given up now. It doesn’t help that many people find him repulsive, either for his declined looks or for his disability or for his personality, but even if he was more in demand he would be hesitant to keep trying.

So: does he want to sleep with this woman? Perhaps not. What does he want, then? Friendship? Perhaps. It’s hard to say. When has he ever known what he really wanted until it was almost gone?

Eventually he excuses himself to relieve himself and get another drink, and as he’s coming back he overhears her talking with one of her friends.

“Surely you are not thinking of allowing him to court you?” her friend is asking, “Or worse, to seduce you?”

“Are you asking because you are concerned for my virtue, or because you find him unattractive?” Floréal retorts.

“Both. I do not wish for you to waste yourself on a poor and ugly crippled artist, Constance.”

“Do not be cruel, Mathilde. We do not know his financial situation, there is nothing wrong with artists, and you should not look down on anyone for an injury. And he does have some charm. Anyway, I am not convinced he is interested in me in that way.”

“In what way is he interested in you, then?”

“Perhaps he is simply lonely.”

Grantaire winces from where he’s eavesdropping behind a plant.

“He came here with friends, did he not?”

“One can be lonely without being alone.”

Not wanting to hear any more of that, he steps out around the plant, making as much noise with the crutch as possible so they know to stop talking about him, smiles warmly at Floréal and less warmly at her friend, and launches into a humorous anecdote.

He leaves not long after – Bossuet has had another mishap, and Grantaire feels obliged to safely conduct him back to Joly and Musichetta – but Floréal agrees that they may continue their acquaintance. In the weeks and months following the ball, they meet up several times, always chaperoned so as to avoid impropriety. She even models for some drawings for him.

It occurs to him, eventually, that what might attract him to her is the way she is utterly detached from Les Amis. Certainly she would benefit from their success; she’s financially able to be both an independent woman and a virtuous one, but just barely, and hopefully that would change in a more equal society. She has even stated, cautiously and without naming them or any other group, that she supports some of their ideals. But such topics of conversation are rare, and she does not appear inclined to run off to sacrifice her life for it. Mostly she’s calmly cheerful, sweet, and practical. He likes her because he likes that whenever he sees her, he can almost forget about the sense of horror that’s usually crawling up through his chest.

And oh, that horror is deepening. Revolutionary fervor only continues intensifying. Petty partial revolts spring up here and there; plotting gets more secretive – for the police investigations also continue to intensify – but also more specific. People all around the city are persuaded to swear to take to the streets to fight at a moment’s notice. By the end of April, there is a distinctive sense that everything has entered the boiling state.

The day of reckoning is nearing.

At a meeting at the Musain one Wednesday, Enjolras, who has been even more somber than usual lately, declares that they should immediately conduct a sort of census to determine who they can count on. He instructs each man to go speak with a group of individuals – polytechnic students, masons, medical students – with whom they have communicated before, so as to see whether those connections will hold. Only Grantaire is left without direction.

When he reaches the end of these assignments, Courfeyrac says, “That arranges everything."

"No."

"What else is there?"

"A very important thing," Enjolras replies.

"What is that?"

"The Barrière du Maine," he says, and then he pauses for a moment as if in great reflection about what to do about this final place. Perhaps remembering Grantaire? But no. He just continues, “At the Barrière du Maine there are marble-workers, painters, and journeymen in the studios of sculptors. They are an enthusiastic family, but liable to cool off. I don’t know what has been the matter with them for some time past. They are thinking of something else. They are becoming extinguished. They pass their time playing dominoes. There is urgent need that someone should go and talk with them a little, but with firmness. They meet at Richefeu’s. They are to be found there between twelve and one o’clock. Those ashes must be fanned into a glow. For that errand I had counted on that abstracted Marius, who is a good fellow on the whole, but he no longer comes to us. I need someone for the Barrière du Maine. I have no one.”

_I have no one_ , he says. Grantaire thinks, _you have me, always_ , and tries not to be offended that Enjolras would rather give this job to Marius Pontmercy than to him, Marius who is a fine person and has been quite entertaining at social gatherings but hasn’t been to an official meeting in _years_ because of the Napoleon incident.

"What about me?" he asks before he can think better of it. "I am here."

The men turn to him in surprise. Enjolras blinks as if the idea of Grantaire doing anything has absolutely never occurred to him. "You?"

"I."

“You, indoctrinate republicans! You, warm up hearts that have grown cold in the name of principle!”

He was once a quartermaster, bending the wills of entire ships full of men by convincing them that following Flint was in their best interest. He was Captain Flint's equal, and one of the only people in the world with power over his heart and mind. He controlled the fate of five million Spanish dollars in gold. Men have killed because he gave them a look. He was the pirate king of Nassau. His was the name used to start a movement. He stopped a war from happening, and had he chosen to he could have made that war go in any direction he wanted, just by speaking the right way to the right people.

He can say none of that. Instead he just says, "Why not?"

"Are you good for anything?"

Wounded, he answers, "I have a vague ambition in that direction."

"You do not believe in everything," Enjolras snaps, and Grantaire thinks, _If only you knew._

Out loud he says, "I believe in you." Which, actually, is just as revealing, and not really what he meant to say.

Enjolras is so taken aback that he actually, literally, takes a step back. When he speaks again it is to ask, with a slight tremor in his voice, "Grantaire, will you do me a service?"

"Anything," he says, and that's too close to laying himself bare so he quickly smirks and adds, "I'll black your boots."

The humor shutters whatever hope had been building in Enjolras's eyes and he sighs. “Well, don’t meddle with our affairs. Sleep yourself sober from your absinthe.”

"You are an ingrate, Enjolras."

“You the man to go to the Barrière du Maine! You capable of it!”

Not only is he capable, he is the perfect man for the job. He knows how to turn men's minds, he knows how to talk to artists, and he knows how to handle a high stakes situation without letting on how serious it is. There is not a man in this room, and probably not a man in Paris, who would be better suited for this. Enjolras has no way of knowing this; he has done nothing to indicate that he is capable and has in fact gone out of his way to seem useless and uninvested. It is reasonable for Enjolras to doubt him. And yet it stings.

He insists he can do it. What will he say to them, Enjolras asks, and he hears Flint asking the same question, and he wonders when someone will just trust him. No, he doesn't know these men very well, but he is on good terms with them; no, he has never claimed to care about principles, but he has listened to the meetings and he has read; he knows what they believe and what they sound like, and he knows how to talk, how to say all kinds of shit and sound like he means it and make people believe it.

Perhaps he gets a bit worked up about it, a bit dramatic, a bit sarcastic, and perhaps it's not surprising when Enjolras pleads, "Be serious."

He has never felt more serious. If he can't stop these idiots from fighting, he can at least try to reduce how disastrous the outcome will be, and Enjolras is right that getting the sculptors at the Barrière du Maine on their side is crucial for that. He so does not want to be involved in this, but he _needs_ to be involved in this. A burning darkness he has not known for a very long time rises within him. _Those ashes must be fanned into a glow_ , Enjolras had said, and the ashes inside his own heart may be starting to stir.

He stares Enjolras down with wide eyes and replies, "I am wild."

He watches Enjolras consider him, doubt shifting into anger fading into alarm and then something like recognition. Perhaps the feral rage dwelling within that refined marble chest hears something like itself in his voice.

"Grantaire," Enjolras says, finally, gravely, resolved, "I consent to try you."

He nods, ignoring the stares from their friends, and leaves. But he does not go to the Barrière du Maine, not right away. First he goes home, where he has a waistcoat that some revolutionary apparently wore once, which he was given by Bahorel as either a joke or an invitation some months back.

Enjolras looks up with a raised eyebrow when he enters the Musain again. He hears some of the others who are still around sighing, but he looks only at Enjolras as he bellows, "Red," and makes a show of flattening his lapels.

He crosses the room and steps in close to Enjolras, so close he can see his long lashes kissing his cheeks as he blinks rapidly.

"What are you doing, R?" Enjolras asks softly.

"Let me do this," he says urgently. "I am a part of this, you see? Whether or not either of us wish it, it is so. I can put on your costume, Enjolras. I can speak your words. I will show you I can."

He watches Enjolras clear his throat. "I do not understand you at all."

Grantaire leans in, shivering at the way he hears Enjolras's breath catch, and whispers in his ear, "Be easy."

When he steps back, Enjolras looks far from a man whose mind is at ease. But it will have to do.

The men at Richefeu's smoking-room at the Barrière du Maine welcome him in easily, as he expected. For some reason or another he has made his way over here only once or twice, so he does not know most of them, but there are a few painters who he has had brief interactions with, and they recognize him.

"I happen to be very fond of dominoes," he says cheerfully, and they grin and usher him in.

For the first game, he does not bring up Les Amis or their principles at all. He bickers with his competitors about their hands. He smiles at their jokes. He commiserates about the difficulties of being an artist. They play, they laugh, they smoke, they drink. After just a few rounds he may as well be their best friend.

As the hour progresses, he keeps all of that up, but begins slipping in comments about how practicing art would be easier if students and working people were treated better. Quotes from Rousseau. A mention of his friend Courfeyrac who said this, or his friend Feuilly who believes that. Les Amis talking points delivered quite casually, but with confidence, as if the idea that liberty is worth fighting for is just an accepted fact just like the rules of domino.

He speaks so casually, in fact, that the men don't even seem to notice that he's attempting to indoctrinate them. They just nod along to most of it, and he notices that some of them do seem to be getting increasingly spirited about his points. It's certainly not the approach Enjolras would have taken here, but it's working, he's sure of it. Enjolras is a great many things, but he is not subtle, and subtlety may be what is called for with these men, who hold some revolutionary views but would surely balk at considering themselves revolutionaries.

"I know a man, a fellow by the name of Enjolras," he says at one point, laying down the double four, "Who cares so little for women that I have heard him declare that he only loves France. It's a shame, truly, that France can't love him back."

As the men laugh, he does feel a bit bad about publicly mocking Enjolras, especially since he has a suspicion that his disavowal of women is only in part due to principles and may in fact be covering up a proclivity towards men. But he can only feel guilty for a moment, because one of the men takes the bait and says, "Enjolras? I've heard that name. Isn't that the boy in charge of that ABC group?"

"Les Amis de l'ABC, yeah, he is," Grantaire says, "Though if the police ask you, there’s no leader. Domino! You know of them?"

"Oh, damn you. Yes, they've been around here a few times, trying to recruit us. You're one of them?"

"Well, I think that's up for debate. They're good people, and they frequent places with good liquor, so I like hanging around them. Not quite sure about all the things they say."

There's some more laughter, and then someone asks, "Aren't they talking about a real fight? Barricades, shooting at the army, all that?"

He takes a swig of wine. "They are. And soon. Any day now, really."

"If they ask you to help them, will you?"

"I haven't decided yet. What about you?"

Some muttering among the men. One of the sculptor's assistants says hesitantly, "Seems dangerous, yeah?"

"Well, certainly," Grantaire says, "Which is why I'm hesitant. I've been called a coward more than once, and I've never been ashamed of it." He shrugs. "Probably less of a risk the more people show up, though, I suppose. Twenty or forty men would be fucked, but who knows what a few hundred could do."

The muttering turns more thoughtful. The man who first brought up Les Amis says, "It's something to consider."

"Absolutely."

"You say they're good men? And they really believe in all that, about liberty and equality and building a better future?"

"They're some of the best men I've ever known," he says. "And they believe in all of it with the fervor of madmen, but I think they're quite sane. It's a dangerous combination to be sure, but a bit inspiring even to a drunken skeptic like myself."

The man hums thoughtfully.

Grantaire lets a heavy silence hang over the room for a minute, giving them a chance to start mulling it over, and then he grins and says, "Another game, then?"

When he leaves a while later, he has barely started down the road when Enjolras appears out of nowhere and demands, "What was that?"

Startled, Grantaire swears profusely as his crutch catches between two cobblestones. "Where did you come from?"

"I was on the bench over there," Enjolras says, grabbing his arm so he stays upright. "I came to check on how you were doing."

"Why?" Enjolras looks away and Grantaire is struck by understanding which is quickly joined by a hot rush of anger. "You didn't trust me."

"Can you honestly say I was wrong to doubt you?"

"I understand that I have not been active in the group before, but I said I would do this and you agreed to give me that chance. Now you're, what, following me? Loitering in Richefeu's doorway and eavesdropping, waiting to jump out of the shadows if I misquoted the Social Contract?"

"You were just playing dominoes!" Enjolras cries. "I was in the area and thought I would stop in to see if you needed anything, and you weren't talking about the cause at all, you were just playing the stupid game with them."

"And how long did you stand there?" he retorts. "Just long enough to see me sitting there and make a judgement? I don't suppose you waited long enough to listen to any of our conversation? Did it ever occur to you that perhaps I was fitting in, making them comfortable with me? I did talk to them about your cause, I just inserted it into the discussion naturally so they would react more warmly to it." A flicker of hesitation crosses Enjolras's face, and Grantaire bites out, "You're incredible. Someone does something differently than you would have, and it means they're a failure. Not everyone can be convinced of something just by being yelled at, Enjolras."

"I understand that, but the time for friendliness and subtlety is surely in the past, and now that the situation is more urgent, some firmness and directness is required."

"There were about twenty-five men in that room. I would estimate that fifteen of them support your ideals. Of those fifteen, I would say that five will almost certainly join you when it is time for your fight, five are seriously considering it, and the other five could likely be convinced if some further pressure was applied at a later date. Of the remaining ten, the ones who are more skeptical not only of the battle but of the concepts behind it, they are at least aware of what you want to do and some have begun to reconsider."

Enjolras still has a hand on his bicep, and his grip tightens slightly, seemingly without him realizing he's doing it. "How confident are you with these assessments?"

"Very."

They stare at each other for a moment, then Enjolras sighs. "You get upset with me if I expect anything of you, and then you get upset with me if I do not. I find it difficult to know what you want from me."

What does he want from him? Things he cannot have.

"I told you that I believe in you," he says eventually, "And I asked you, just once, to believe in me too."

Things are tense between them for most of May, not so much because of that conversation but because of the fact that judgement day is now undeniably on the horizon.

Cholera has been spreading viciously through the city, further enflaming the resistance to the government’s lack of care for the well-being of the people. When the disease claims General Lamarque, a popular war hero and champion of the poor and of liberty, it is clear that they have finally reached the breaking point.

Lamarque dies on the first of June, and his funeral is announced for the fifth. It will be an excellent excuse to start the uprising. They’ll take over the procession; there will be speeches, and probably rioting. From there, all will depend on the response from the National Guard; if there must be battle, then so be it.

Clearly, no one is going to step back from the cause and forget about it by this point, so Grantaire sees little point in continuing to argue. He’s angry, yes, but it’s hard to say with whom, so he cannot do anything about it. Directing his anger at the government will do nothing; directing it at his friends is cruel in these final days. They’re all tired and afraid and trying to be hopeful.

That’s not to say he goes silent; he can’t seem to make himself stop talking. His rants have always been despairing and unhelpful, but now that is true tenfold. Enjolras tries to ignore him, and snaps at him when he can’t.

So Grantaire is a bit apprehensive when he and Enjolras find themselves alone after a meeting two days before the funeral.

Neither of them says anything at first. Enjolras is over by the window, staring outside but with an air of someone who is really staring into space. Grantaire has noticed him doing that before; he has a theory that he’s trying to look into the future. At the moment, he’s not even sure he knows he’s there. It’s possible he could get away with just slinking out of the room now without a confrontation.

Of course, he’s never been able to leave well enough alone, so he says, “This must be a nightmare for you.”

Enjolras starts and turns to look at him. “Excuse me?”

“Here you are, a few days from dying, with only me for company.”

“Well, it would be more pleasant if you refrained from assuring me of my imminent death, but there could be worse company.”

Grantaire snorts. “Kind of you to say, but I know you hold nothing but disdain for me."

"That is not true."

"Isn't it?"

"You frustrate me," Enjolras admits. "I wish you wouldn't come to the meetings if all you're going to do is drink, and it bothers me that you claim to hold no convictions, but that does not mean I have only disdain for you."

"You pity me, then. The melancholy, attention-seeking, crippled drunk with no belief or hope. You see me as pathetic. You let me follow you around because some part of you hopes that with your influence I can be redeemed. That's it, is it not?"

Enjolras frowns. "I did not say that, either."

"Can you deny it?"

He opens his mouth – probably ready to disagree with him just on the principle that they always disagree – but closes it again without speaking.

"That's what I thought."

"No, that's not..."

"Enjolras, it's all right. Every principled man believes he can change the world, including the minds of the individuals within it. I would be astonished if you were any different."

"I do not think you are pathetic. I find you sad, confusing, and unhelpful, but you are not pathetic. I am very aware that you are intelligent, entertaining, and a good speaker, and that you love your friends. I know that you could have been an amazing asset to our organization if you wanted to be, which is precisely why I find myself so constantly disappointed in you. It is your actions I have a problem with, not you as a person."

Grantaire blinks. "I think that was one of the most backhanded compliments I have ever received."

Enjolras shrugs. He's turned back to the window. Grantaire crosses the room to stand beside him. He hesitates, then places one hand high on Enjolras's shoulder, thumb resting against the back of his neck. Enjolras shudders but doesn't shake him off.

They both look out at the street, where Gavroche, an eleven or twelve-year-old urchin, is harassing a wealthy couple. The child has been hanging around their group occasionally, something that would not bother Grantaire under different circumstances but bothers him tremendously as things are. He’s a good kid, brashly funny, self-sufficient, with an attitude, and he vaguely reminds Grantaire of the original Solomon Little. It has become clear that he intends to attend the march, and probably the ensuing fight. Just a boy. He will die with the rest of them. Grantaire hasn’t slept in weeks.

After a moment, Grantaire asks Enjolras, "Can it not be enough that I support _you_?"

"What is one man? I appreciate that you care for me, of course I do, but I do not matter. The cause should be everything."

"You are too good to be a martyr."

Enjolras sighs and leans back into his touch. "I do not want to die, R. You must know that. And I do not want to lead our friends to their deaths. I simply cannot see another way forward."

Grantaire says, "You will never be able to convince me that this violence is necessary."

"We shall see," Enjolras says, voice hollow as the skeleton of a bird, and Grantaire closes his eyes and echoes, "We shall see."

The next day, Louison pulls him aside and asks quietly, “What is going to happen tomorrow?”

“It will be unspeakable. You would do well to stay far away.”

“You have never approved of what your friends have been planning. Why?”

"I have seen attempted revolutions before," he tells her. "I have seen small groups of people who society cares little about, trying to force society to change its mind by starting a war. And I have seen what comes from it. Violence, and pain, and death, and a society that is unchanged and acts like nothing ever happened. These Friends of the Abased, they think they will make history? They will be lucky to be a footnote."

"I don't think they care much about their stories being told," she says tentatively. "They seem to just want to contribute to shaping a better future."

"Yes, well," Grantaire sighs. "That's even worse."

The night before the funeral he stays up all night, sitting up on the roof of his building and watching the sun rise on the fifth of June. Is this the dawning of a new day Enjolras has always talked about? It just looks like any other sunrise. It is beautiful, but only where the color and light can peek out from behind the gathering clouds – it will probably rain today. It occurs to him to wonder if it’s because of him; if that storm all those years ago had been caused by his mood, not Flint’s. Or maybe nothing means anything, and it’s just a storm.

He goes back inside to his room, considers dressing in the red waistcoat but sets it aside. Waters a potted flower he keeps by his window. Goes for a long early morning walk.

As he wanders, he finds himself getting incomprehensibly aggravated over anything, everything. A wave of anger crashes over him outside the public library on the Rue Richelieu, maybe because he knows how many of the tomes in that place record the circle of history, the unending story of people suffering for nothing. God, he hates the human race sometimes.

His mood is not improved by the encounter he has a few minutes later. He’s passing through the park and sees Floréal a little ways down the path, on the arm of a man he doesn’t know but viscerally mistrusts. She glances over and sees him, says something to the man she’s with, who nods, and she draws away from him and walks towards Grantaire.

“Mademoiselle Floréal!” he calls as she nears him, trying to muster a smile.

“My name remains Constance,” she says mildly. “Good morning, Monsieur Grantaire.”

“Is it?”

“For me, it is.” She beams. “I have exciting news. I am to be married.”

He blinks. “Married?”

“To Michel Fortier. A financier.” She gestures at the man waiting for her. “He asked me yesterday. I am delighted.”

“He’s covered with smallpox scars,” he sniffs. What an inane comment – what pettiness. But this seems like one more bad thing on top of everything else. No one could be good enough for this woman, but it’s not even just about her; it’s symbolic. Eleanor Guthrie became a shadow of Rogers. Miranda Barlow spent her life waiting around. Madi became John’s dependent the moment they started living as spouses in Europe. Max refused to become a mayoress in name lest it ruin her actual agency, and was right to do so. Women who live their own lives full of bright potential are claimed by men as if they are prey or property, and the union ruins them. A generalization, and so he must find some specific problem. Hence smallpox.

She raises an eyebrow. “Are you insinuating that a man’s worth is defined by physical marks of infirmities beyond his control?”

Well, she’s got him there.

“He’s a _banker_ ,” he says weakly.

“What possible complaint do you have against bankers?”

There are plenty of complaints he could raise. Bankers tended to be offensively dismissive of him and Madi when they were trying to make arrangements in Bristol; his father was a banker; the banking families of France have funded imperial and monarchal rule and hoarded money for the upper class.

As he tries to find the words to impress at least this last point on her, she pouts and says, “This man can provide for me, Grantaire, and he loves me. He is going to give me a secure, happy life.”

“I thought you were happy now.”

“I live alone in an attic. I could be happier.”

“And a spotted financier is what will make you happier?”

“Yes.”

She’s back to smiling, now, like the thought of this marriage can light her up from the inside.

“You fancy yourself in love too, I suppose.”

“There is no need to say it like that. Haven’t you ever been in love?”

He laughs, maybe a bit manically. Then he stares into space for a minute and changes the subject. “Are you going to the parade?”

“The funeral? For that general? No. Michel is a royalist.”

“Of course he is,” he mutters. A blessing in disguise, though, maybe. She at least will be safe.

The banker waves at them meaningfully, and Floréal tells Grantaire, “I need to go.”

“Of course.” He catches her hand as she moves away and says, “Constance. I hope that you have a very good life.”

Puzzled, she says, “Grantaire, that sounds like an oddly final farewell.”

“Have a good life,” he repeats, and turns away before she can respond.

He can’t shake the feeling that the lurching rhythm of his crutch tapping against the path sounds like it’s counting down to something.

His meandering inevitably brings him to the Corinthe. He finds Joly and Bossuet cheerfully breakfasting on oysters, cheese, ham, and wine at a table on the upper floor as if it’s not their last meal.

Gibelotte, one of the servers, brings more wine over as Grantaire sits down – she knows him well – and he starts right in, and deflects Bossuet’s comments about how much he’s drinking.

Joly and Bossuet have just seen the “marvelous sight” that is the passing head of the funeral procession; Grantaire is glad to have missed it. He distracts himself by swallowing a bad oyster and complaining about it, and then as long as he’s complaining he mentions the library, and Floréal’s corruption into a bankeress, and the related fact that there is no morality or modesty in the world because men are predatory eagles, whether they be chieftains conquering cities or bankers claiming brides. So, he asserts, there is no reason to believe in anything but drink.

Then he says, “You talk to me of the boulevard, of that procession, et cetera, et cetera. Come now, is there going to be another revolution? This poverty of means on the part of the good God astounds me. He has to keep greasing the groove of events every moment. There is a hitch, it won’t work. Quick, a revolution! The good God has his hands perpetually black with that cart-grease.”

He rarely discusses God, even to recount his shortcomings. There were those six months or so he spent in a German monastery a while back, of course, but otherwise he tries to steer clear of religion. (Maybe even more so after the monastery, actually.) The last time he spoke _honestly_ about his feelings about God was probably back on the cliffs with Flint, when he explained his certainty that there was no such being, and his feelings have evolved in the intervening 117 years.

Something about being made into some kind of fucked up immortal changed his perspective. God exists, and he’s a cruel and incompetent bastard.

“If I were in his place,” he continues boldly, “I’d be perfectly simple about it, I would not wind up my mechanism every minute, I’d lead the human race in a straightforward way, I’d weave matters mesh by mesh, without breaking the thread, I would have no provisional arrangements, I would have no extraordinary repertory.” He explains his observation that comets and meteors always appear to signal major events and changes in power; Heaven needing to put its own actors into play to guide humanity back where God wants them. “What does a revolution prove? That God is in a quandry. He effects a coup d’etat because he, God, has not been able to make both ends meet.”

He proceeds to explain his suspicion that God – and the universe – are poverty-stricken, bankrupt, but he is aware that his friends’ attention spans are waning. Joly seems far more interested in the brie, and Bossuet is openly staring out the window. They should care about what he has to say. How are they acting so casual about the import of today?

Fuck, he is so tired. He lets his rambling edge towards the ridiculous: comments on it being almost night even though it’s only about ten in the morning, compares the disorganization of the universe to the distribution of children to the wrong parents, claims to be offended by Bossuet’s baldness, says that he should have been a Turk or a prince, implies that the people who will fight today should instead be having sex. His friends barely listen to him. It’s like they’re all just actors going through the motions of a scene, and they’re waiting for him to get through his part so they can have their entrance. All three of them just keep gulping down wine like it will get them through this. These are people he loves. How did they get here?

“Behold me sad again,” he says, back to being fully serious, not that anyone can tell the difference. “That’s what comes of swallowing an oyster and a revolution the wrong way! I am growing melancholy once more. Oh! frightful old world. People strive, turn each other out, prostitute themselves, kill each other, and get used to it!”

As if on cue, either the oyster or the depression catches in his throat and he bursts into hacking coughs.

Joly hits his back a few times, and when he seems assured that Grantaire is not actively dying, he says, as if the past several minutes did not happen, “A propos of revolution, it is decidedly apparent that Marius is in love.” Or at least, that’s what Grantaire thinks he says; Joly’s nose is stuffed up which casts several consonants into question.

So this is the accepted topic of conversation for this fateful morning: not the revolution itself, not the faults of the world, but Marius Pontmercy’s love affairs. If Marius is wise, he will follow this nameless love far away from the revolution. Grantaire says something philosophical and hopefully kind about the relationship, tries to summon an emotion other than bitterness, and makes himself acquainted with his second bottle.

They are interrupted by a tiny gamin, Navet, a friend of Gavroche, popping in to tell them that Enjolras has sent them a signal from the boulevard.

Bossuet asks, “Shall we go?”

“It’s raining,” says Joly nasally. “I have sworn to go through fire, but not through water. I don’t want to get a cold.”

Grantaire refrains from remarking on the fact that he clearly already has one; if there’s a chance of keeping his friends safely indoors for a few more hours he will not reject it. He says simply, “I shall stay here. I prefer a breakfast to a hearse.”

“Conclusion: we remain,” Bossuet says. “Well, then, let us drink. Besides, we might miss the funeral without missing the riot.”

“Ah! the riot, I am with you!” Joly cheers, enthusiastic. Grantaire wonders if they’ll pay him any mind if he slams his head against the table.

Bossuet, looking not unlike a boy at play, says, “Now we’re going to touch up the revolution of 1830. As a matter of fact, it does hurt the people along the seams.”

“I don’t think much of your revolution,” comments Grantaire, as if this is news to anyone. “I don’t execrate this Government. It is the crown tempered by the cotton night-cap. It is a scepter ending in an umbrella. In fact, I think that today, with the present weather, Louis Philippe might utilize his royalty in two directions, he might extend the tip of the scepter end against the people, and open the umbrella end against heaven.”

Of course, he _does_ execrate the Government, but the rest of it stands true; both his ambivalence and the fact that an umbrella would be useful. He was right earlier when he thought there would be a storm today – thick black clouds have been slowly blanketing the sky. The room is now as dark as if it truly was night, and Bossuet calls for a light.

Ah, darkness. So many different metaphors at Grantaire’s disposal, and he’s too exhausted and glum to make any of them.

Something about the boy’s message has struck him, and he grumbles, “Enjolras disdains me. Enjolras said: ‘Joly is ill, Grantaire is drunk.’ It was to Bossuet that he sent Navet. If he had come for me, I would have followed him. So much the worse for Enjolras! I won’t go to his funeral.”

His funeral. Whose funeral? Lamarque’s funeral, which Enjolras has coopted? Or Enjolras’s own funeral, after he gets himself martyred? An interesting question of grammar. The answer matters little; he won’t go to either one.

For hours they stay there unmoving. They drink more wine, then by midday Grantaire moves into beer, brandy, absinthe, letting the black abyss of true drunkenness haze around him. The vaporous pit affords him a form of clarity, and rather than launching him into despair as it would most men, it instead reminds him of a different kind of darkness which was once familiar to him. Yes, once he could have said that this terrifying, exhilarating form of losing himself was central to his identity, and now he can say it again. Once he accessed it through violence. Now he accesses it through drink. The thought warms him, and in the flickering candlelight he sees his friends more vividly than he did in the light of day.

This may be the last time he spends with them. He should not waste it with sorrow. He allows them to conduct him back to gayness.

They speak of Musichetta: “She is the very finest of women,” Joly says, and Bossuet clinks glasses with him in agreement.

“I knew a woman like that once,” Grantaire says. “A woman I would have bowed to as to a queen.”

They speak of books and plays. They compete in making the most complex puns; Grantaire wins, and laughs uproariously.

The rain begins around one o’clock and dampens the back of Bossuet, who is sitting in the window, but it does not dampen their spirits. They cover the table with empty bottles and glasses. Grantaire flirts shamelessly and perhaps offensively with Madame Hucheloup, the old widow who owns the Corinthe. By two o’clock he is so drunk and so gay that he could almost forget about the matter of funerals entirely.

Of course, this is when the riot comes to them.

On the street outside, a sudden burst of noise – men running and shouting.

“To arms!” some of them yell, and Grantaire recognizes those voices. Bahorel, Combeferre, Feuilly, Jehan, Courfeyrac, and rising above them clear as a bell, Enjolras.

So the moment has arrived. Grantaire stares numbly as Bossuet leans out to shout to Courfeyrac and, once he has his attention, ask where they’re going.

"To make a barricade."

"Well, here! This is a good place! Make it here!"

Very slowly, Grantaire lists every swear word he knows in his head. It’s a long list, since he’s picked up several languages over his long life. It does not help much.

Bossuet goes down to the street to meet Courfeyrac, and Grantaire and Joly move to look out the window. Passerby disappear, and windows are quickly shuttered on neighboring buildings. Some of the mob quickly get to building the barricade; the rest flood into the Corinthe.

Matelote and Gibelotte, the servers, go in and out, helping where they can. Poor Madame Hucheloup cries about all the chaos in her establishment, and whispers that the end of the world of coming. How rare, for someone to agree with Grantaire!

As Matelote passes by, Grantaire catches her by the waist, laughing loudly and ignoring the way she sighs at him. He praises her ugliness; he says that she and Madame Hucheloup will be heroes in the upcoming fight.

Then, perhaps egged on by noticing some of the men below glancing up at the window, a slight non-sequitur: “Gentlemen, my father always detested me because I could not understand mathematics. I understand only love and liberty.” A mix of truths and lies as always. “I am Grantaire, the good fellow. Having never had any money, I never acquired the habit of it, and the result is that I have never lacked it; but, if I had been rich, there would have been no more poor people! You would have seen! Oh, if the kind hearts only had fat purses, how much better things would go! I picture myself Jesus Christ with Rothschild’s fortune! How much good he would do!” Of course, he _has_ had money at points, on account of the pirate treasure, but it’s not as if he can admit to that, and it’s true enough that he doesn’t have enough to make a substantial difference for ending poverty. He is derailed from this track by Matelote losing whatever patience she had for him and trying to pull away. He lets her go but exclaims, “Matelote, embrace me! You are voluptuous and timid! You have cheeks which invite the kiss of a sister, and lips which claim the kiss of a lover.”

“Hold your tongue, you cask!” Courfeyrac yells up from the street.

Fair enough, but he still retorts, “I am the capitoul and the master of the floral games!”

Enjolras looks up.

Grantaire notices, because his eyes are always drawn to Enjolras if he is nearby. And oh, Enjolras commands attention now more than ever. He stands at the crest of the newly formed barricade. He holds a gun. It is dark, so his features are not distinct, and his golden curls are waterlogged. But by god, he is beautiful. And he is a warrior now, a modern Aeneas. Grantaire is above him, spatially, and yet Enjolras seems to tower above everything. Grantaire can barely breathe, looking at him.

Anyway. He raises his face, and makes (piercing, painful, wonderful) eye contact with Grantaire from across the street. “Grantaire, go get rid of the fumes of your wine somewhere else than here,” he shouts up. “This is the place for enthusiasm, not for drunkenness. Don’t disgrace the barricade!”

How he could disgrace the barricade when he’s not even at the barricade is beyond him, but the words still hit him with a force that surprises him.

Enjolras has yelled at him hundreds of times, called him a drunkard, told him to leave. Such sentiments should be expected, especially now that everything is at its most serious. Yet this exclamation now is a shock to his system.

The pleasantly awful fog of alcohol from earlier abruptly evaporates, and he has to sit back down. He leans forward so he and Enjolras can still see each other.

After being harshly treated by Enjolras, perhaps he should not still feel such unspeakable gentleness towards him. He does.

He _should_ leave. He does not want to fight. He does not want to watch the bloodshed. He does not want to get in the way. But he cannot stand to leave them.

He says tenderly, “Let me sleep here.”

“Go and sleep somewhere else,” cries Enjolras, which makes a certain degree of sense – who the fuck goes to sleep in the middle of a riot? – but can he really not see that the only place his life means anything is at his side?

“Let me sleep here — until I die.”

_An hour, a day, a month, a year, forever…._

Enjolras does not hear it as a declaration of love. No one never does. He is as disdainful as ever. “Grantaire, you are incapable of believing, of thinking, of willing, of living, and of dying.”

How outstandingly, ironically, near to the truth.

“You will see,” he says gravely.

He turns away from the window with some low mumbling about God knows what, and he rests his head, which suddenly feels unbelievably heavy, on the table. He really did drink a tremendous amount today. Enough, perhaps, to kill some men? It is with that vague thought that the world begins to slip away from him, and then everything goes black.

He wakes to a chilling silence. It is a sudden kind of silence, which is why it must have roused him – tumult crashing to nothing is a shock. Similarly, his previous intoxication is gone; his head feels clearer than it has ever been. As consciousness returns to him, he rises and rubs his eyes, and allows sickening understanding to hit him as he glances around.

It is apparent that he must have been asleep – or dead? – for at least a day; the carnage here surely could not have materialized in just a few hours. It is too horrific. The window next to him has been shot to nothing; he tries not to look beyond it at the remains of the barricade. The stairs up to this floor have been knocked away, probably a desperate attempt to slow the soldiers down. The entire room is a mess, furniture strewn about, broken glass everywhere. And bodies. God. He is surrounded by corpses.

The silence is because there is simply nothing left.

Nothing, that is, except Enjolras, standing in the corner of the room, facing a large group of National Guardsmen and other soldiers, all aiming their weapons at him. He is unarmed but unwounded, defenseless but proud, staring them down with crossed arms as if he is unaffected by this fate.

But Grantaire knows him well, and he can see the very subtle trembling that gives away his fear. Enjolras has accepted his end, but no man really wants to die.

He looks unbearably human, and young, and mortal, and lovely. Grantaire hears one of the guardsmen murmur, “It seems to me that I am about to shoot a flower,” and he understands the thought. Yet there is also something strong and otherworldly about him – that after at least a day of brutal fighting that killed all his friends, he looks utterly untouched.

The guardsmen have not noticed Grantaire, because of his position in the room and because of their focus on Enjolras. But some motion catches Enjolras’s attention, and his eyes cut towards him and widen almost imperceptibly.

One of the men orders everyone to take aim, and another tells him to wait; neither Enjolras or Grantaire look at either of them, trapped in each other’s gaze.

The officer asks, “Do you wish to have your eyes bandaged?”

“No,” Enjolras says, still watching Grantaire. His shoulders have lost some of their tension, like it is a relief not to be alone in his last moments, even if it is Grantaire.

“Was it you who killed the artillery sergeant?”

“Yes.”

Grantaire wonders if that was his only kill or one of many, if it was his first, if it thrilled him or horrified him or both.

The guardsmen bristle, angry about their comrade. No sympathy, of course, for all the lives they’ve stolen themselves.

_Fuck_ them.

It’s interesting, though, the way these soldiers are reacting to Enjolras. The way they seem to be _bothered_ by him. He should be nothing to them. He’s one young man standing alone against twenty of them; he’s the last of a movement they’ve already crushed. He will be easy enough to extinguish. Yet they are acting as if he is a giant. For one thing, there’s the way they intend to kill him – death by firing squad – overkill, unless they see it as a legitimate execution of a political enemy, in which case they’ve granted him and his revolution some small degree of legitimacy. And there’s the way they glare at him, but also appear to be in awe of him, and the very subtle shaking of some of their hands on their guns. They’re unsettled by him.

And suddenly, seeing this standoff, Grantaire _understands_ his friends and what they have been trying to do, maybe for the first time.

The rebellion was far from a victory. Enjolras has fought like hell, has even killed, but he hasn’t defeated the National Guard by any means. But in some way, he has gotten to them. The men in this room will not be moved by Enjolras’s sacrifice enough to go kill the king. But now they _know_ that someone was willing to make such a sacrifice. They will remember this moment for a long time, and they will be shaken by it. The People of Paris did not rise the way his friends hoped, and society will not change much if at all after this, but a few people stood up and said, “this is wrong,” and a few people heard them, and maybe that’s worth something.

Just as abruptly, he knows that he is going to have to join Enjolras in this gesture.

He could probably get away. They haven’t noticed him yet. Certainly getting down to the lower level of the building with the stairs cut away would be difficult, and might draw attention to him, but he might be able to manage it. But he cannot leave Enjolras alone here. And could he save him, and get them both out of here? Maybe. He hasn’t killed anyone in 97 years, and it’s been even longer since he had to fight so many people at once, but if he could get his hands on a weapon, he could probably kill or injure at least a few of them. Perhaps enough to create panic among them, and he could use the chaos as cover to grab Enjolras and run. But Enjolras would never forgive him. He’s made his choices, and they’ve come to this. It’s over. If Grantaire spared him now, he would just find another moment to martyr himself later.

So Grantaire must let him die, and must stand with him. There will be consequences: either he will somehow die, and will have to face whatever afterlife may be waiting, or he won’t, and will have to deal with the fallout of the guardsmen realizing he’s alive. But whatever happens, no matter the consequences, he has to stand with him. He needs everyone in this room to know that whether or not he believed in the cause – and not even he is entirely sure about that, even now, because it was always too dangerous to allow himself to truly think about it – he did believe in Enjolras, he did believe in his friends, and in this critical moment, he wants, he needs to be aligned with them.

“Long live the Republic!” he hears himself say. He does not take his eyes off of Enjolras, who takes a shuddering breath at his words, but in his peripheral vision he sees the guardsmen’s heads whipping around to him. He swallows and starts moving quickly across the room, and declares clearly, “I am one of them. Long live the Republic.”

Everyone stares at him, speechless, as he passes in front of the guns and places himself beside Enjolras. “Finish us both with one blow,” he says, glancing for a moment at the guardsmen’s dumbfounded faces.

“Grantaire,” Enjolras whispers wonderingly.

Turning his eyes back to him, Grantaire asks softly, “Do you permit it?”

Because he needs him to agree. He does not regret what he did for Flint and Madi, but he knows how they hated him for doing it without their input. This needs to be different. Enjolras may only have moments to live, but if he spends those moments thinking Grantaire is somehow still making a mockery of his cause, he’ll never forgive himself.

Not that it will make much difference what he says; the guardsmen are going to shoot Grantaire no matter what. But it’s the sentiment that matters.

He feels a touch to his hand, skin against skin as shocking and transformative as plates of the earth colliding, and realizes that Enjolras is fumblingly taking his hand; he squeezes back automatically and stares at his face. His _smiling_ face – he can only think of a few times Enjolras has ever smiled at him, but he is smiling at him now, bright and genuine.

That smile is the last thing he sees before his world is taken over by a brilliant white flash of light as the guns resound.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I'd love to hear from you, in a comment or on tumblr at sparrowsfallingfromthesky!  
> The title of this fic is from Spirit Cold by Tall Heights.


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